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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984614">we'll lay on the grass and let the hours pass</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland'>nonisland</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(which ship? almost any.), Camping, Chapter 5: Tower of Black Winds (Fire Emblem), Everyone Can Have Nice Things, FE3H Kinkmeme, Female My Unit | Byleth, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Gen or Pre-Ship, Multi, Scenery Porn, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:41:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>24,380</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984614</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Byleth takes the Blue Lions on a…wilderness survival trip, which is definitely not just an excuse to get them all out of Garreg Mach in what’s shaping up to be a stressful moon for everyone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ambiguous or Implied Relationship(s), Blue Lions Students &amp; Blue Lions Students (Fire Emblem)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>FE3H Kink Meme</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>we'll lay on the grass and let the hours pass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for a <span><a href="https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/profile"></a><a href="https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/"><b>3houseskinkmeme</b></a></span> <a href="https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1608.html?thread=2627144#cmt2627144">prompt</a> that was…probably not this (it’s a long prompt, but the gist of it was the line “I'm jonesing for some relaxing time outdoors, and I would like our beloved characters to experience the restorative powers of nature even if I can't”). OP had no preference for ships, so instead of being smart and picking a ship I wrote…shippy gen. OP had no preference for specific favorite characters, so instead of being smart and picking a handful to focus on I…yeah.</p><p><b>Contains:</b> mention of the existence of canon-typical racism, though it isn’t depicted on-page; mentions of implied PTSD (Sylvain); description of sunburn; and…the way academy-era Felix talks about Dimitri. I have, however, ah, set this after the Ingrid+Dedue B support.</p><p>Don’t think too hard about the geography. Like OP, I was not able to partake of usual outside activities this summer, so I sent the Blue Lions somewhere a lot like where I would have gone camping if it hadn’t been for covid and wildfires. IntSys wants us to believe there are palm trees in Sreng, north of Gautier; Adrestia can have little a Mediterranean-style montane forest as a treat.</p><p>Title from Depeche Mode’s “Stripped,” which I actually heard first as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7wQpF3ySE">the Shiny Toy Guns cover</a>.</p><hr/>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Verdant Rain Moon in Garreg Mach is <i>hot</i>. Sylvain hates it, thanks. The one thing it has going for it is that people are showing a little more skin, but even that isn’t worth it. It is officially too hot to care about beautiful, scantily-clad women.</p><p>“Are you all right?” Ingrid asks out of nowhere.</p><p>Sylvain, lying on his back on the floor of the library, almost drops the book about battalion tactics he’s been reading on his face in surprise. Disaster averted, he rolls his head to look at her. She looks cruelly normal, summer uniform aside. Felix has replaced a full third of his training with swimming laps in the fishpond and when last spotted Dimitri and Dedue were both looking stoically miserable. Ingrid is a little flushed, and she’s twisted her braid around her head sort of like a neater version of Marianne von Edmund’s, but that’s it. Maybe Sylvain should look into getting one of the girls’ summer uniforms himself.</p><p>“Seriously,” Ingrid says, sharper now. “Are you all right?”</p><p>“It’s hot.” Sylvain lets himself whine a little. Maybe she’ll tenderly dump a barrel of water over his head.</p><p>Ingrid sits on her heels at his side, wobbling a little as she tries to keep her skirt covering all the essentials. “It’s your <i>brother</i>. I know you haven’t seen him in a long time, but…”</p><p>“You know, that uniform looks great on you,” Sylvain says.</p><p>She doesn’t even yell. “Nice try,” is all she says, though she does twist again so her legs—which do look good, he wasn’t lying—are angled away from him and she’s pretty much leaning on one hip. “But too late. Anyway, I…I asked the professor to check in on Felix, since Lord Rodrigue is here, but.”</p><p>Sylvain thinks about dropping the book on his face on purpose, but it would be a shame to risk his profile. “Oh, brilliant.”</p><p>Ingrid sighs. “I wonder if it’s usually this…exciting here.”</p><p>“Nope,” Sylvain says. He doesn’t say, <i>You think your dad would have let you come if it were?</i>, but he thinks it. “It’s just a wild year, I guess.”</p><p>“It is.” After a minute, Ingrid adds, “Why are you lying on the floor?”</p><p>Sylvain gestures at the flagstones next to him. “Join me at the coolest spot in Garreg Mach. The stones are cold, it’s comfortable, and mostly people leave you alone if they see you’re reading.”</p><p>Carefully, Ingrid shifts her legs out of the way completely and flops down. “Oh, this isn’t bad,” she says, sounding surprised about it. One day she’ll learn he can have <i>good</i> ideas too. “And I hear there’s going to be peach sorbet with dinner.”</p><p>“Nice,” Sylvain says. He can take it or leave it, usually, but cold sounds good right now.</p><p>“It can’t stay this hot, can it?”</p><p>It absolutely can, but Sylvain isn’t going to be the one to tell her.</p>
<hr/><p>“We’re going to Adrestia,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>Dimitri makes an effort not to disappoint her by slumping in his seat. If they are <i>very</i> lucky, the latest instance of demonic beasts, or bandits, or whatever other trouble the Church of Seiros will take on for its faithful will be somewhere up north—perhaps on the Brionac Plateau again, or the former Nuvelle lands on the northern coast.</p><p>It is…hot. He hardly wishes to complain, especially when he knows enough of Duscur to know that Dedue must be even more unhappy despite his silence on the matter. Dimitri will hardly be the first to object, in these circumstances. If Dedue can endure it peacefully, Dimitri will do no less.</p><p>“Adrestia?” Sylvain moans. “C’mon, Professor, isn’t there anything we could be doing somewhere else?”</p><p>Dimitri has spent relatively little time there, but of course when one thinks of Adrestia one thinks of the sun-drenched southern coast, the endless amber tide of Gronder Field, the flamelike shapes of the cypresses of Enbarr. Adrestia in his mind is washed with the crimson and gold of the imperial colors, an endless summer thick with the drone of bees and the scent of wheat baking in the hull.</p><p>Still, he hardly wishes to question the professor’s judgment, or the archbishop’s. “Sylvain,” he says reprovingly.</p><p>Sylvain turns innocently wide eyes on him, a look which may work on the young ladies of Garreg Mach but which will not fool Dimitri. “I’m just saying. Don’t you think”—now he is giving Professor Byleth that look, as if <i>she</i> is likely to believe it—“one of the other classes would be better off taking this one? They’re more used to the weather.”</p><p>“We’ll be up in the mountains,” Professor Byleth says, wholly unaffected by Sylvain’s eyes. Her perfect control is less unsettling than it used to be, but Dimitri would still like to see her, perhaps, smile, on occasion. Not— Only because it would further humanize their enigmatic professor. “Bring rain gear. We leave the day after tomorrow.”</p><p>“How far into the mountains, Professor?” Dedue asks.</p><p>After a moment’s consideration, Professor Byleth says, “Far. It gets cool at night, even at this time of year.”</p><p>Felix straightens a little at her words. He had not been slouching, as Sylvain had, but there had been a certain unusual weariness to his posture. “What else should we bring?” he asks. “Is it beasts? Bandits?”</p><p>Professor Byleth shakes her head.</p><p>“Is it a test?” Annette asks, leaning forward. “Do we need to try to prepare for any problem, even though we don’t know what it is, but without bringing more gear than we can sensibly carry?” Even she looks revived by the news, though apart from Mercedes she has been dealing with the heat better than any of them.</p><p>“Clever,” Felix says grudgingly.</p><p>“Where is it?” Mercedes asks. “In Adrestia, I mean.”</p><p>“West of Rusalka,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>Sylvain groans. Dimitri is severely tempted to join him, but of course he resists. Due south of Garreg Mach, through the whole length of Adrestia—it will be extremely unpleasant until they are able to get into the mountains. Still, it is a promise of cool at the other end, and for his friends Dimitri will hardly reject that.</p>
<hr/><p>“What do you think?” Annette asks, looking around frantically at the stacks of clothes, books, and everything else she <i>might</i> need. She wishes Professor Byleth had just told them what it was they were supposed to be doing! She <i>hates</i> not even knowing what she needs to get ready, when she has such a hard time getting ready when she <i>does</i> know.</p><p>“Clothes,” Mercie says. She’s sitting in Annette’s desk chair, untouched by chaos. “And you should bring something to read, or you’ll be upset with yourself later.”</p><p>“Soap,” Annette mutters, shoving things into a pack. “Three days’ worth of uniforms, and <i>hopefully</i> I can do laundry along the way—do you think three days is enough?”</p><p>Mercie shrugs. Annette is a little jealous of how Mercie has gone from unflappably poised to unflappably poised <i>and</i> not melting, while still looking really good in the summer uniform. Like, really good. Annette does not compare, but she is looking.</p><p>“Oh, I should find clothesline,” Annette says, dropping the pack. “And clothespins! You can’t put away wet laundry, and it’s hot enough that it should dry quickly if we can hang it, unless it rains. What about you, Mercie, what are you bringing?”</p><p>“I thought I might bring some embroidery for the road,” Mercie says. “I’m working on a set of bookmarks for all of our professors right now, so they should fold up neatly…”</p><p>“That’s nice!” Annette says. “What about clothes and things, though? If you let me store my soap in your pack I’ll have more room for the clothesline, I don’t want to forget that—”</p><p>“Of course, Annie,” Mercie says with a smile.</p><p>Annette looks at her textbooks, wondering how many she can fit. Probably a lot, right? If she puts them on top of her clothes they’ll press the clothes <i>down</i>, and then it’ll be <i>like</i> they aren’t taking up any extra room…</p>
<hr/><p>“The cooks say they’ll let us have ten pounds of jerky,” Felix says as Ingrid comes into the training hall.</p><p>She blinks at him. “Hello, Felix,” she says. “Good afternoon to you too.”</p><p>He rolls his eyes. “Hello, Ingrid.” She’s so picky. He’s here, she’s here, it’s not like they don’t know each other. “We’re going to be gone for at least a week, and there are nine of us—do you think it’s weird that the professor told us not to equip battalions as well?”</p><p>“It’s a little strange,” Ingrid says, heading over to the rack of training weapons and picking up a lance. “I’m sure she has a good reason, though.”</p><p>“You always think people have a good reason for things,” Felix says. It comes out sharp; he makes it that way.</p><p>He can see the set of Ingrid’s shoulders change, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead she just tosses him a second training sword and says, “I hear Lord Rodrigue is here at Garreg Mach for a visit.”</p><p>Felix bobbles the sword with his left hand and almost drops it. “Not my problem,” he says, getting a better grip on the hilt. “He’s just here to see the boar anyway—I won’t even have to talk to him.”</p><p>Ingrid sighs. “First one to three disarms wins?” she asks.</p><p>“What, you’re not confident enough to just make it a best-of-one?” he asks, shifting his stance.</p><p>“You have two swords!” Ingrid protests. “I’ll have to try twice as hard as you will.”</p><p>She takes him to five bouts anyway, which Felix would prefer not to acknowledge. It’s pathetic. She had a <i>lance</i>. “Hmph,” he says, and then, grudgingly, “Well fought.”</p><p>“Same to you,” Ingrid pants, wiping escaping wisps of hair off her forehead and the back of her neck. “Ugh. Sylvain says you’ve been swimming? That would have been…a smarter idea.”</p><p>“It’s not bad,” Felix says. His own hair’s half out of its twist too. He yanks the cord loose and re-ties it into a sloppy queue high on the back of his head. “This time of day it’s not much colder than the water in the monastery baths, but it builds flexibility and endurance.”</p><p>Ingrid leans against one of the columns around the hall, tipping her head back against the stone. “Nice.” After a moment, as her breathing steadies, she says, “Okay, hold on. You said ten pounds of jerky?”</p><p>“Exactly.” Felix takes the column next to her. Yeah, it does feel better than just standing there sweating. The shallow coolness of these weirdly long summer nights has sunk into the stone. “For nine of us, for at least a week, and you’ve <i>seen</i> how the professor eats.”</p><p>“Mercedes doesn’t like jerky,” Ingrid says with a frown. “So we need to make sure she gets something she’ll eat. But still, eight of us over seven days is…what’s the seventh part of ten?”</p><p>“What’s the…fifty-sixth part of ten,” Felix corrects her. He’s pretty sure that’s right.</p><p>Ingrid groans. “No math right now. If we can hunt we’ll be fine, but that’s not enough if we can’t. We need to make sure to bring bows and maybe fishing gear.”</p><p>“Not bad,” Felix admits. He can think of worse ways to spend a few days, especially if it does cool off in the mountains.</p>
<hr/><p>“I’ve never packed as much for traveling in my life as I have since I came here,” Ashe says with a self-conscious laugh. “What about you?”</p><p>“We rarely…traveled, in the sense that we do here, in Duscur,” Dedue says after a moment’s pause—just long enough for Ashe to start to wonder if he shouldn’t have asked. “The villages were spread out, but not so far that we had to spend nights on the road.”</p><p>Ashe looks up from coiling bowstrings. He wants to ask, <i>So you always had family to stay with?</i>, but manages not to blurt the question out. It would be unkind, he figures. Unless Dedue wants to talk about it? But if Dedue wanted to talk about it he could, after all…</p><p>“It is strange,” Dedue admits. His hands had stilled on the lances and spears he was sorting through, but now he starts moving again. “But I cannot regret that I have relatively little need to cast myself on the hospitality of the people of Fódlan.”</p><p>“Have people given you any trouble?” Ashe asks, dropping the string he’d had between his fingers. “You should talk to his Highness, you know he wouldn’t stand for it if he knew.” And Dimitri is a <i>prince</i>, which means he can actually <i>do</i> something about it.</p><p>Dedue shakes his head. “Garreg Mach is…different, for the most part, from Fhirdiad.”</p><p>“Good,” Ashe says. “And Adrestia should be too, shouldn’t it? I don’t even know where Rusalka is, except that it’s somewhere way down south. Lord Lonato taught me some geography, but not…as much as some of the people here know. We didn’t really know it would be that important…”</p><p>“I do not know Rusalka,” Dedue says. “But it seems…likely.”</p><p>“I hope so,” Ashe says, going back to the bowstrings. “Oh, I wonder what it’s like. Ingrid asked me if I could make sure we’re all supplied for some bow hunting, but I don’t know how well that will work out for everyone, you know? Annette asked me if she could try using my bow once and, well…” He tries to think of a nice way to explain Annette’s awful aim, and fails. “It didn’t work out too well.”</p><p>Dedue says, “I am sure the professor will have a plan, if necessary, to make sure we do not starve ourselves.”</p><p>“Well, there are always berries,” Ashe says. “And greenery for salads. Maybe mushrooms, if the professor knows which ones are safe to eat, but I don’t know if I want to risk it if she doesn’t.”</p><p>“Safer not to,” Dedue agrees. There’s a smile in his voice, even though his expression doesn’t change.</p>
<hr/><p>“No,” Ingrid says, when Sylvain arrives at breakfast the next morning with his shirt unbuttoned almost down to his navel.</p><p>He gives her a pleading look. “Seteth wouldn’t let me have one of the girls’ uniforms.”</p><p>Ingrid opens her mouth. Then she closes her mouth again. It is too early in the morning to even begin to address the idea of Sylvain in— He’s at least a hand and a half taller than the tallest of the girls this year. It would fit him like a tunic, if he could even get into it at all with how much broader across the shoulders and chest he is as well. It would be a disaster. She does not have the energy to deal with it.</p><p>She takes a long gulp of tea instead.</p><p>“Sylvain,” Dimitri says, sounding more scandalized than Ingrid can manage to be before she’s finished her breakfast, “you certainly can’t go to class like that.”</p><p>Sylvain looks down. “It’s not that bad,” he tries, and looks around the table. “Uh…Ashe, back me up here.”</p><p>“<i>Me</i>?” poor Ashe asks, going pink. His eyes dart down Sylvain’s shirt, then back up to his face, then away entirely. “I—what—”</p><p>“No,” Felix says. He’s kept his gaze firmly on his plate since Sylvain walked in, but he looks up now just enough to try to steal a strip of bacon off of Ingrid’s plate. She smacks his fork away with her own. “What?” he says. “You weren’t eating it.”</p><p>“I was going to,” Ingrid protests. She likes bacon; they certainly never got it in Galatea. It’s just…she was letting it cool off first. Even this early in the morning the air has the muggy threat of the day’s coming heat. It makes her want to lie down in a cellar somewhere, or somewhere so deep in the woods that the sun doesn’t make it through the trees and the moss is cool.</p><p>Still. She picks up the strip of bacon and takes a bite before Felix can get to it again.</p><p>Thwarted, Felix returns his attention to Sylvain. “Have you finally lost all good judgment? It’s a classroom, not a brothel.”</p><p>“All <i>right</i>,” Ingrid says through her bacon, which does not deserve this fate. She swallows so the next sentence is clearer. “Sylvain, just—”</p><p>“Please,” Dimitri says. He doesn’t blush that easily, but Ingrid knows him, and his ears are bright red. “We’re representing the best of the future of Faerghus here. I do not want—”</p><p>Felix opens his mouth. Ingrid says “<i>No</i>” before Felix can say anything about Dimitri trying to impress Professor Byleth.</p><p>“I don’t think they usually wear shirts like that in brothels,” Mercedes puts in absently, sipping her tea.</p><p>Half the table chokes.</p>
<hr/><p>Mercedes doesn’t mind the heat nearly as much as her friends do—she spent the first ten years of her life in Bartels land, after all, which was a little warmer than Garreg Mach even though it was close to the ocean—but she hates to see them all so unhappy. And it is hot, and it will be nice to go somewhere else, even if they are going to have to do more fighting once they get there.</p><p>“So what <i>do</i> you like if you don’t like jerky?” Ingrid asks at the midday break. “I don’t know how fast the professor’s going to be pushing us to get there, so I want to make sure we have rations we can eat on the way without having to stop and hunt.”</p><p>“Oh, that’s so sweet of you,” Mercedes says, “but I don’t want to be a bother.” Usually she just eats the rations that are provided, unless they’re spicy. Fortunately they rarely are.</p><p>Ingrid shakes her head. “If we have to do all our own provisioning, and since the kitchen won’t give us more than ten pounds of jerky anyway, I might as well try to make sure we have something you like.”</p><p>“Well…” Mercedes considers it. Of course, Ingrid is used to having to be practical, and anyone who grew up in Galatea after the famine of the early ’70s would be particular about food. “If it really makes you feel better, Ingrid, I can try to think of something. Oh, I wonder if we could bring fruit. Do you think it would travel all right?”</p><p>“Dried fruit would,” Ingrid says thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad plan. And maybe some nuts?”</p><p>Mercedes nods. “That’s a lovely idea. And that way everyone can have something a little more pleasant, and some variety.”</p><p>“Felix won’t want any,” Ingrid says. She’s focused on something else, not Mercedes at all.</p><p>“You look so tired,” Mercedes says. “Forgive me for saying it, but don’t you think that maybe you should worry about yourself, and not just about your friends?”</p><p>Ingrid straightens defensively. “I’m fine,” she says. “But thank you for your concern.”</p><p>Mercedes sighs. Still, there’s only so much she can do, and if Ingrid doesn’t want to take some time for herself Mercedes can’t make her. “All right.”</p>
<hr/><p>“Dismissed,” Professor Byleth tells them as the heavy bars of sunlight through the windows climb up the far wall. She looks as unfazed as Mercedes by the heat, though she is admittedly dressed…differently. It would be imprudent as well as lacking in tact for Dedue to comment further on her attire, or that of his classmates, so he does not.</p><p>“What time do we leave tomorrow, Professor?” Annette asks.</p><p>“Six.”</p><p>Mercedes says, “Oh dear.”</p><p>“Take the night off from training if you want,” Professor Byleth says with a look around the room. Her eyes linger, as Dedue’s have, on Dimitri, braced like a wilting flower against the back of his chair. “There is no homework.”</p><p>Felix, scowling, says, “Take the night off from training right before a mission?”</p><p>Professor Byleth’s unreadable gaze turns to him. “A mercenary knows you rest while you can.”</p><p>“Don’t question it.” Sylvain tips back in his chair. “Just take the gift from the pretty lady and say thank you.”</p><p>“I’m not a lady,” Professor Byleth says. “And if you crack your skull on the floor I’m not mending it for you.” She is, as ever, cool and remote as lakes in high mountain country; Dedue cannot tell if she means to joke, or if she really would leave it to Mercedes or to Annette.</p><p>Sylvain sits back up with a flailing of limbs that reminds Dedue of wind-tossed sedges. The feet of the chair clatter on the floor.</p><p>“…There will be no extra lesson tonight,” Professor Byleth says. “You’re dismissed.”</p><p>At that they break free and rise. Annette tries to catch the professor with one last question about the mission. Ashe is telling Ingrid about the evening’s dinner offering, a vegetable and pasta dish that from Ingrid’s response she likes as well. Sylvain has succeeded at getting the argument he was trying to out of Felix. Dimitri, his golden hair dulled and limp with sweat, rises from his chair with a determination Dedue recognizes.</p><p>“Your Highness,” Dedue says quickly, “will you help me check over the gear for tomorrow’s departure?”</p><p>Dimitri looks torn. “I had intended to train…”</p><p>Dedue is aware that he had intended to train, despite the heat, or perhaps because of it. Of all of his classmates, Dimitri and Sylvain have been the most obviously unhappy, but Sylvain has found relief in complaint, in removing clothing, and in limiting his physical workload. Of the many things that are said about Sylvain, none of them are that he is hesitant to take a pragmatic approach.</p><p>Dimitri, however… Dimitri refuses to slow down, or to look anything less than princely. Even with Professor Byleth’s permission to rest for a night, he will not; Dedue considers asking her to make it an order, but he doubts she will, and he is reluctant to overuse her orders lest Dimitri tire of them, or she tire of Dedue’s own requests.</p><p>“I can complete the inventory myself if it is any trouble, your Highness,” Dedue says. He can, and he will; it is not a task he has invented to distract Dimitri, though he would prefer to have someone who had had no part in the initial gathering involved as well.</p><p>“No, no,” Dimitri says. “I wouldn’t leave you to work alone while I trained. I would be happy to help you, Dedue.”</p><p>Going through the weapons and kits brightens Dimitri’s expression as training has not, the past few days. He makes sensible suggestions about gear that Dedue and Ashe had not considered: a softer cloth for the lances, to make it easier to clean and oil them quickly if need be; one of the more expensive jugs of oil, because Sylvain hates the one the rest of them use.</p><p>“He won’t say anything,” Dimitri adds. “I do not wish you to think I mean he would complain, but he…”</p><p>Dedue thinks of the reflective brilliance of Sylvain’s easy good cheer. “I understand,” he says. “Thank you for telling me.”</p><p>“And a second whetstone for Felix.” Dimitri turns away to count swords again. His shoulders are a little firmer than they were this afternoon, his posture more relaxed and less defeated. The provisioning room is windowless and thick-walled, and the day’s heat was blunted here. “He loses them sometimes.”</p><p>Dedue adds a fourth whetstone to the maintenance kit. “Are Ingrid’s food selections adequate?” he asks without much hope. “Should we replace something?”</p><p>“Oh, no, not at all,” Dimitri says. He does not even look. For yet another day, Dedue has been denied the chance to find out what it is that Dimitri actually wants from a meal. He <i>will</i> figure it out, though. Some day, he will.</p>
<hr/><p>The morning of their departure dawns brassy with heat and already sticky. Felix is…awake. It’s better right now than it will be again before late night, anyway, so they might as well get started. Mercedes is drooping, half-asleep, in her horse’s saddle. Ingrid is still half-asleep and pretending not to be, Sylvain is awake and pretending he isn’t. Annette keeps up a cheerful, incessant stream of chatter until she realizes nobody else feels up for conversation, and goes quiet.</p><p>Felix is enjoying the morning stillness, and not at all disoriented by the sudden silence broken only by the clopping of the horses’ hooves and the occasional twittering of birds.</p><p>As they approach the town Annette starts humming instead. It’s the same few notes, or almost the same few notes—Felix doesn’t pretend to know anything about music but he thinks they’re a little bit different each time. She picks the tune apart like he puts together a sequence of parry and riposte, twisting his hips a little more here to change the angle of step and strike, angling his shoulder more sharply there to get more force behind the blow. When she’s got something she likes—he thinks—she hums it through again and starts on a new line.</p><p>“Oh, that’s pretty,” Ashe says. “What is it?”</p><p>“What?” Annette goes redder than her hair. “Oh, I—nothing! I wasn’t—augh, why were you listening to me!”</p><p>Ashe goes to put his hands up, forgets he’s holding the reins, and drags his confused and displeased mare to a stop. She takes a few impatient steps in place while Ashe looks around wildly. The boar is riding closely at Dedue’s side. Ingrid, nibbling on one of the pieces of jerky from her pack, is still working her way toward being awake.</p><p>“Easy,” Sylvain says, nudging his horse over to Ashe’s side. “C’mon, Ashe, you know better than to treat a girl like that, don’t you?” His voice is warm, coaxing, more for the mare’s benefit than Ashe’s. She turns an ear toward Sylvain and steadies. “You can’t just yank them around, you gotta be gentle—<i>there</i> you are.”</p><p>“You know that horse isn’t <i>actually</i> one of your girls,” Felix sneers.</p><p>The horse, infuriatingly, has fallen entirely under Sylvain’s spell. When he clicks his tongue at her she falls back into pace with the rest.</p><p>“Whatever helps,” Sylvain says. “You think you can remember that, Ashe?”</p><p>“I—I think so,” Ashe says.</p><p>Professor Byleth, who has been watching the whole thing from off to the side, says, “We’ll work some more on your riding when we get back to the academy.”</p><p>Ashe nods firmly. “All right! I’ll do better next time. Thank you, Professor! And thank you too, Sylvain.”</p><p>Felix will never understand horse people. Horses are useful animals, worth the trouble to ride well if you need to travel extensively, but he’s never tried to have a conversation with one and wouldn’t want to start. He rides a gelding, because it’s simpler and you don’t have to argue with them about anything, which Sylvain has always pretended to be shocked by and Ingrid has only grudgingly agreed makes sense, and the boar gets <i>sad</i> about, as if Felix is missing out on something special by not wanting his transportation to trouble him and as if he’d care if Felix were. At least Professor Byleth sees things his way.</p><p>It’s a shame Ashe scared Annette out of humming, though. You’d think he’d know better. If they have to have some kind of conversation on this ride ride he’d much rather listen to her working on a song than to the boar acting like he cares about them all having a pleasant time together, or Sylvain sweet-talking a goddess-damned horse, or whatever lecture Ingrid is going to get around to giving him later today.</p>
<hr/><p>Dimitri has considered the warmth of horses as a positive asset, a mercy when riding in the biting Faerghus winters. They are solid creatures that radiate heat, and he is fond of them, though he has had less time than Ingrid and Sylvain to hone his riding skills.</p><p>He is deeply relieved to get off his borrowed mare and sit down under a tree when they break an hour or two after midday for lunch.</p><p>There is a stream running past the road, glassy and sluggish under the blazing sun, and Professor Byleth leads them to a spot where the banks overhang a broader section of the stream. “Ashe, Mercedes,” she says, taking string and a fishhook out of…a pocket? She has pockets in that— Dimitri averts his eyes. “See if you can find berries to have with lunch. If you think they might be poison, don’t pick them.”</p><p>“All right,” Mercedes says, standing with a sigh. “It’s probably better than sitting, at least."</p><p>“It’ll be okay,” Ashe says. “I think we passed some blackberry brambles a few minutes ago, so as long as we’re careful not to get scratched we’ll find something delicious and be back before too long.”</p><p>Professor Byleth cuts a slim branch from a nearby tree and trims the protruding twigs. Dimitri should do something to help, but he finds himself unsure what, exactly, that something should be.</p><p>Annette takes off her broad sun hat and drops onto her back under another tree. “I have an idea,” she announces to the canopy of leaves overhead. “Professor, do you think I can try the modification to the basic fire spell I’ve been working on to make it, you know, a little less…burn-y?”</p><p>“Burn-y,” Felix repeats.</p><p>Annette waves one arm irritably at him. “It’s too hot to fight,” she says. Dimitri considers telling her that that was not Felix’s picking-a-fight voice, but reconsiders; it is much too hot to provoke Felix himself. “What do you think, Professor? Can I sear whatever you catch so we don’t have to build a campfire? I <i>think</i> I can do it.”</p><p>Professor Byleth twists a piece of something—jerky?—onto the hook and casts out the line. “Practice,” she says.</p><p>“I can do that!” Annette sits up again, looking around. “Does anyone have any ideas for what I can practice on?”</p><p>Sylvain, lying facedown on the grass, sweeps his arm back and forth until he finds a fallen branch, which he lifts triumphantly.</p><p>“You propose we avoid starting a fire by asking Annette to start a fire?” Dedue asks.</p><p>“She can throw it in the stream after,” Sylvain says. “Someone take this, the angle is weird and my arm is getting tired.”</p><p>Annette gets up and collects the branch. “Hmm.”</p><p>With an internal sigh, Dimitri stands and begins to clear a patch of grass so that they can build a campfire if necessary and Annette can test her magic without worrying about catching anything nearby. No sooner has he ripped out the first handful of grass than Dedue also rises and tries to insist he take over the task. Their polite argument—Dimitri will not pretend it is not an argument, any more than he pretends it is not always one when Professor Byleth assigns them to share chores—is interrupted by the return of Ashe and Mercedes, Ashe carrying a large kerchief laden with berries. Both of them have scratched hands, but the berries, when Ashe sets the kerchief down, are plump and glossy.</p><p>“An impressive find,” Dedue says, studying them thoughtfully.</p><p>Dimitri takes advantage of the botanical distraction to remove four more handfuls of grass without any remarks about his royal dignity, before Dedue notices and deals with the last few himself.</p><p>“All right,” Annette says. “I think I’ve got it.” She takes the hand-axe Professor Byleth had used for the fishing pole and neatly chops off a piece of the thickest end of the branch about as long as her two hands side by side. “Ready?”</p><p>They all, prudently, clear space for her as she approaches the bare circle of dirt. Dimitri is no expert on magic, of any color, but he thinks she does something differently than she usually does to conjure fire; certainly the circle of runic light is much smaller, and the flare of brightness around the chunk of wood blackens it but does not consume it. A few small flames lick along the surface, and Dedue quickly stamps them out.</p><p>“That’s so clever,” Mercedes says.</p><p>Annette beams proudly. Dimitri and Ashe are quick to add their own praises, as is Dedue, after he has checked the sole of his boot for damage.</p><p>Sylvain, still facedown in the grass, says, “Brilliant work as always, Annette.” He has not moved, except to find the branch, since he lay down when they stopped, but Dimitri is hardly going to point that out if Annette herself has not noticed.</p><p>Even Felix unbends enough to tell her, “Not bad.”</p><p>“Bring it here,” Professor Byleth calls, not looking away from the water. Dimitri cannot tell whether the fishing line is moving in the current or with the nibbles of a fish, but he hopes there are at least some.</p><p>Annette collects the charred branch and brings it to her. “Good work,” Professor Byleth says, and Annette dances from foot to foot in delight, then slips on a rock and almost goes headfirst into the stream. Professor Byleth catches her just in time.</p><p>The fishing pole, released, leaps toward the river. Felix uncoils from the tree he’s been leaning against and lunges for it, catching the very end just before it can go under. The move leaves him lying on his stomach at Professor Byleth and Annette’s feet, and the moment he realizes this is very obvious. Dimitri cannot say he would have handled it any better, and in fact must admit he would probably have handled it worse; Felix merely twists, after the initial startled flail, so that he is staring very determinedly down the fishing pole.</p><p>“Sit down,” Professor Byleth tells Annette, and bends calmly to recover the fishing pole from Felix. It appears difficult to transfer, judging by the length of time involved. Dimitri occupies himself considering the blackberries. He is not fond of them; although the texture is interesting, it is a little too interesting for convenient eating. And, of course, the juice stains, though that is less of a concern.</p><p>A few moments later, Professor Byleth has successfully hauled in the massive fish at the other end of the line, which she quickly cleans and then presents to Annette.</p><p>Annette stares warily at the raw meat in front of her, then visibly steels herself and casts her modified fire spell on it. The end product is blackened a little on the outside, and perhaps the tiniest bit raw at the center, but it is perfectly edible, and even the others don’t complain about the flavor.</p><p>“We’ll rest a little longer before we take the road again,” Professor Byleth says. “Why?”</p><p>“It’s important not to march troops during midday in summer, or around dawn or dusk in winter,” Ashe says quickly.</p><p>Professor Byleth nods. “Good.”</p><p>Ashe beams, and Dimitri wishes he had been a moment quicker—more alert, less drowsy with the heat and the meal—to answer.</p>
<hr/><p>It is fucking hot in Garreg Mach, and it is fucking hot as they head through the county of Varley, and Sylvain regrets to announce that that has left him without a word for the weather as they head further south into the county of Bergliez.</p><p>Even Mercedes is looking overheated now, though Professor Byleth doesn’t seem affected yet. Of course, she hasn’t worn her cloak since they started, so she’s riding bare-armed and almost bare-legged, with a strip of skin showing between her vest and her short trousers—which is, Sylvain considers, the only way to exist in this heat.</p><p>He doesn’t even want to say anything about her tits. This is what he’s been reduced to.</p><p>“Professor, can’t the uniform code be relaxed a <i>little</i>?” he asks. “If I’d decided to take brawler training I wouldn’t be wearing much of anything in battle, after all.”</p><p>“Hm,” Professor Byleth says, which isn’t a no.</p><p>“It would be nice to have shorter sleeves,” Mercedes says wistfully.</p><p>Dimitri is lucky his mare likes him, because he’s barely guiding her at all. “If you think it suitable, Professor, it would improve class morale.”</p><p>“We’re no good in a fight if <i>some</i> people”—Felix glares at Dimitri—“can’t even sit straight in the saddle from overheating.”</p><p>“Okay,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>Sylvain has started to take off his shirt almost before the second syllable has left her mouth.</p><p>Four hours later, as they stop for their second night on the road, he is aware that that might have been something of a, well, not his best plan. He probably should have left the shirt on.</p><p>“Your <i>shoulders</i>,” Mercedes gasps, circling around him. The skin is drum-taut, radiating heat. He doesn’t actually want to know what color they are. She touches one shoulder, very lightly, and he hisses at the pain and has to fight not to cringe away. “You’ve gone <i>scaly</i>,” she says. “Oh dear.”</p><p>Professor Byleth joins her and hums softly, which Sylvain <i>thinks</i> means she’s concerned. He hopes it means she’s concerned. Maybe she’ll pity him enough to decide to heal him, or to let Mercedes or Annette do it. He makes a pathetic whimpering noise just in case, which is easier than he’d like it to be.</p><p>“Idiot,” Felix says, dragging Sylvain’s packs off of Sylvain’s horse and dropping them in the camping area like the sunburn has stopped Sylvain’s eyes from working.</p><p>Ingrid, who has apparently joined the gawking crowd, says, “Oh, I think that’s worse than the one you got when we were—what was it, nine?”</p><p>Sylvain shudders, and then wishes he hadn’t.</p><p>“Mercedes,” Professor Byleth says, “would you?”</p><p>Sweet merciful goddess be thanked, assuming She is up there at all, he is not going to have to spend the next three weeks trying not to cry when anything touches his back.</p><p>“This will hurt,” Mercedes says sweetly, resting her fingertips lightly against the back of Sylvain’s neck. The burn isn’t as bad there—his hair must have shaded the skin some—and so he only has to suppress a wince. A numbing coolness rolls down from her fingers as she murmurs the words of a basic Heal.</p><p>Sylvain can feel his skin loosen again, going from something that feels like leather soaked in saltwater and left to dry into a part of his body that will bend as he moves. The headache that had built without his even noticing melts away, and some of the feverish soreness of the rest of his body. “<i>Thank</i> you,” he says, heartfelt, as she takes her hand away.</p><p>“Shirts stay on,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>Her shoulders and arms, Sylvain has to admit, are richly tanned. His are, well, he’s from Gautier and he’s a redhead. They are not. “Shirts stay on,” he agrees, as close to meekly as he can. “Except at night or if we’re swimming, right, Professor?”</p><p>She just shakes her head.</p><p>Sylvain was the only one to have decided to abandon his shirt completely. Annette hadn’t even rolled up her sleeves, which, in retrospect, should probably have been a hint. The others had merely rolled sleeves or undone buttons—even Dimitri had been persuaded when he realized that both Dedue and Ashe were following his example and suffering because he was—and are unscathed. Sylvain gets to be the lesson. Delightful. If he must be a horrible warning, he’d rather it be for something <i>fun</i>.</p><p>The third day is even hotter, and there isn’t even a single fucking cloud on the horizon. Sylvain keeps his sleeves rolled down to his wrists and sulks.</p>
<hr/><p>They camp that night in the foothills of the Morgaine Mountains, having passed through the duchy of Aegir and into the viscounty of Rusalka. Dimitri is uncharacteristically short-tempered, and Dedue regrets that there is nothing to be done about it. He can hardly spare Dimitri this heat, and they are already on their way out of it.</p><p>He has heard that the Adrestian Empire is the breadbasket of Fódlan, a land rich in crops and ripe with promise, but the landscape of these hills and the plain below and to the east almost reminds him of the moorland of Duscur. The plants are very different, to be sure, and so is the heat, but the feel of it is the same: scrub shading from green to brown to gold, broken at intervals by darker green shrubs and small trees. These trees twist up darkly: cypresses, perhaps, he thinks. But still, there is familiarity in seeing a stand of them rising from the tawny dappling of the plain.</p><p>“I’m so <i>thirsty</i>,” Annette exclaims, refilling her cup for the third time from the narrow little stream Professor Byleth has guided them to. “Is it just the heat?”</p><p>“It is drier here,” Dedue says.</p><p>Professor Byleth nods encouragingly.</p><p>When he meets her eye she gestures, as if to say, <i>Go on</i>. Dedue would rather not, but none of the others have stepped in, and if it must be him it must. “The plants are different, and the grasses by the roadside a different green.”</p><p>“Wrong side of the mountains,” Sylvain says with a yawn.</p><p>Dedue looks at him encouragingly. He has long suspected, from the tales Dimitri has told of their childhood as well as from personal experience, that Sylvain is more intelligent than he cares to pretend. Like their professor, Dedue would prefer to listen rather than lecture.</p><p>He has been too obvious, though. When Sylvain notices his attention, he mumbles, “Just something my dad used to say.”</p><p>“Get lots of water,” Professor Byleth says. “And rest well. We leave at dawn.”</p><p>Although that day was the hottest yet, the night is less bad than Dedue had expected, as if the earth is no longer stubbornly clinging to its heat. He says a brief prayer of thanks to whichever god is responsible: the goddess of Fódlan, sheltering her children in her own land, or the god of the earth, or of the winds, or of travelers; or all four of them together, just as Dedue travels with these people of Fódlan himself.</p><p>He finds he likes that idea. It wraps around him softly and lowers him into sleep.</p>
<hr/><p>The mountains are very steep and, wow, kind of beautiful, really, especially once Annette summons a <i>teeny</i> tiny breeze—she’s been practicing, okay—to circle around herself. Once she’s sure it’s safe she sends another one over to Sylvain, who really should have brought a sun parasol.</p><p>Annette should have brought a sun parasol herself, but she just could not get it to fit in her pack, and she meant to figure out a way to strap it onto the side but she completely forgot. That’s okay, though, because it did give her the motivation she needed to finish adjusting a wind spell down to where it can be used safely on allies. It might help in heavy fog, too, if she can figure out how to direct it so it’s more a river of air than a little circle—</p><p>“Annette!” Ashe says, and she realizes he must have been trying to get her attention for a while now.</p><p>“Sorry! What is it?”</p><p>“You keep trying to guide your horse off the trail,” Ashe says.</p><p>Oh. Well. Maybe she was looking a little too intently down the mountainside and across the rippling folds of tree-covered rock to the neighboring slope. She pats her horse’s neck and says, “You’re a good boy.” Then she smiles sheepishly at Ashe. “Thank you for warning me! I was looking at the forests—do you see it gets darker the further up you go?”</p><p>“Well, Professor Byleth said it was colder.” Ashe manages to get his horse moving forward again, and Annette nudges hers into following. “It would make sense for the plants to be different, wouldn’t it? That’s why we have a greenhouse at Garreg Mach, but also the kitchen gardens.”</p><p>“Right,” Annette says.</p><p>Her tiny breeze wears off, which means Sylvain’s must be about to go too, but she <i>really</i> shouldn’t waste any more magical energy on cooling, especially since they still have no idea what’s waiting for them when they get wherever they’re going. The heat isn’t even that bad any more, at this point, actually. It’s more like regular Garreg Mach weather <i>last</i> month. Maybe it would be okay to just let it go for now?</p><p>“Has the professor given you <i>any</i> hint?” she asks without much hope. Professor Byleth doesn’t play favorites, though she’s a little more attentive to Dimitri—probably because he’s a prince, or house leader, or both—and whatever the test is, she wouldn’t give just one student a clue.</p><p>Ashe shakes his head.</p><p>Felix, ahead of them, has been slowing down. Now he falls back into their conversation and says, “It must be bandits. They could put a fairly good blockhouse up in these mountains. You could burn them out, though, right?”</p><p>Annette looks nervously around at the dry scrub and the sappy pines. “I…<i>could</i>,” she says, “maybe, probably, but I don’t know if that’s the best idea here!”</p><p>“Not beasts?” Ashe asks.</p><p>Felix shades his eyes and squints uphill. A passing breeze—a real one, not one of Annette’s—tugs a few locks of his hair loose and blows them across his face. He sputters and brushes them away from his mouth. “They’re not very agile, and this trail doesn’t seem like a good way for them to travel either. We’d see tracks.”</p><p>Well, maybe they would. Though Annette doesn’t like the idea of bandits in a blockhouse <i>either</i>, waiting with spells or bows to defend the pass they’d claimed.</p><p>Still. If they have to use fire they’ll use fire, and then…could she put a fire <i>out</i> with wind, like blowing out a candle? Perhaps if she took it from two sides at once, or maybe if she separated the flame from its fuel with a Cutting Gale… Oh, she <i>wishes</i> she’d learned some ice magic, but she’s just not very good at it.</p><p>Well. She’ll just have to trust that the professor isn’t leading them into anything they can’t handle, <i>and</i> that the professor doesn’t want them to burn down half of Adrestia along the way.</p>
<hr/><p>As they get higher and higher, Mercedes considers the wisdom of rolling down her sleeves. The breeze is picking up—not just Annie’s little spells, which hopefully Professor Byleth hasn’t noticed, but a real one—and the air is cooling off a little as they rise out of summer. But the day warms up, so she decides against it.</p><p>It really is a lovely view down the side of the mountain. The higher up they get, the more the plains look like crumpled velvet, a patchwork of sunlight and shadow the sleepy greenish-gold of summer. The cypresses are replaced by leafy trees, and grasses replace scrub in the undergrowth. Eventually, straight wide-branched pines join the other trees, leaving the air sharp-scented with resin.</p><p>By midmorning it’s almost a comfortable summer day, and when they stop for lunch it’s by a gurgling stream that jumps enthusiastically downhill, in a clearing fringed all around with green—dark from the pines, soft from the grasses beneath them. Some other trees, slim and white with pale rounded leaves, are scattered among the pines; the sun catches in their leaves like coins. The rest of the plants are different up here too, of course. They find bilberries and chives and stag’s garlic, and Professor Byleth manages to catch two small fish in quick succession.</p><p>It’s nice here, with the sunlight just falling through the trees but the shade surprisingly cool, and the stream running sweetly in the background. It’s nice, too, to have a midday rest where they aren’t falling asleep from sheer discomfort. Mercedes wishes they could stay, but after a shorter rest than usual Professor Byleth calls them to move on.</p><p>Of course, they do have to deal with the…whatever it might be. It’s not right that anyone should take a place the goddess has made so beautiful and turn it into a place where violence is done.</p><p>The air is sharp and clear—so clear Mercedes feels as if she can see all the way to the end of the world, with the far plains barely hazed by distance—and the wind in the trees overhead roars like waves against the shore, the pines singing to each other with their deep voices and the broad-leafed trees making a higher hissing sound like foam on rock. It’s been a while since she heard the sea, but the trees sound so familiar.</p><p>She wonders, not for the first time, how Constance is doing. She wishes she could be sure that Professor Jeritza is really Emile, so that she’d know he’s safe and happy.</p><p>It’s probably mid-afternoon, or so, though it’s a little hard to tell with the sun passing to the other side of the mountain’s peak, when Professor Byleth leads them off the trail again. “Here we are,” she says.</p><p>There isn’t any sign of a battle, or struggle. Mercedes looks through the trees and doesn’t see a defensive outpost of any kind, either.</p><p>“Professor?” Dimitri asks hesitantly. “Where exactly are we?”</p><p>“West of Rusalka,” she says.</p><p>Felix, much less patiently, asks, “What are we <i>doing</i> here?”</p><p>Professor Byleth swings gracefully down off her horse. “Practicing wilderness survival,” she says. “Three of you passed your qualification exams last month. You’re all making good progress with your chosen weapons.”</p><p>“Is this…” Felix starts, and breaks off, shaking his head.</p><p>Dimitri looks torn. “Professor, did you…”</p><p>“Is this a <i>vacation</i>?” Mercedes asks with dawning delight. “Oh, Professor, how lovely. Thank you so much for thinking of it. And this place is so beautiful.”</p><p>Annette stares at her pack. Ingrid looks wildly around at the forest. Felix looks as if he’s seriously considering punching a tree, which Mercedes really hopes he won’t do—it won’t be any good for his hand, and it won’t make him feel better, either.</p><p>Dedue, with a faint but real smile softening his face, says, “A very wise idea, Professor.”</p><p>Sylvain starts to laugh. Ashe is gazing up at the pines surrounding them, wide-eyed. Has he ever been anywhere out in the woods before, for anything other than killing? He’d grown up in a city, and unless Lord Lonato ever brought him traveling, he probably wouldn’t have been.</p><p>Now that she knows that they can just admire the scenery, Mercedes does. The treetops are dipped in gold as the sun passes over the mountain, with little rivulets of it running down their trunks.</p><p>“I didn’t bring enough books!” Annette bursts out.</p><p>“Mercedes,” Professor Byleth says. “Pick a spot for our tents. We’ll be here for about four days. You may take…Felix with you.”</p><p>Well, of course they do still have to be doing lessons, Mercedes supposes. She wishes she didn’t have the first lesson of the group, but at least Felix knows a little more about tents and where to put them than she does, so she doesn’t have to worry about putting everyone in the wrong place.</p><p>“How much rain do we get up here?” Felix asks.</p><p>Professor Byleth looks up at the sky. “Some,” she says. “None or lots, usually.”</p><p>That’s not very helpful, but Felix nods as if it is, so Mercedes dismounts from her horse and starts walking around. It’s a flatter area right here, dipping into something too small to be called a real valley where a stream—maybe the one they’ve been following, maybe not—broadens into a wide pond. Unless she’s gotten completely turned around, the edge of the mountain is off to the other side. There are some rocks, and some flat areas. The air is crisp and cooling, enough that she does stop to roll down her sleeves.</p><p>“Any ideas?” Felix asks impatiently.</p><p>“Somewhere flat, I thought,” Mercedes says. “We want it to be big enough to set up all four tents, so we’re close to each other if something happens in the night. Do you think they have bears here?”</p><p>Felix opens his mouth to snap something, then hesitates. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I don’t think they have bears in Adrestia, but I’d swear that right there is a Tailtean pine.”</p><p>Mercedes looks at the tree he’s pointing to and nods as if she can tell a Tailtean pine apart from any other kind of pine. “So we should be sure to be in earshot of each other.”</p><p>“Probably. And not at the top of a cliff, any more than the bottom—we wouldn’t want anything to get washed downhill in the rain.”</p><p>“That’s right,” Mercedes says. They keep walking a little further, checking between trees for promising clearings. “Should we try to find a cave?”</p><p>This time Felix’s silence is definitely the one he uses when he wants to be rude but is thinking twice about it for once. “There aren’t any caves here,” he says.</p><p>She sighs. “I suppose that’s true. Well, what should we do about the rain, then?”</p><p>“Not under a big tree,” Felix says, which is not very helpful of him. “They attract lightning.”</p><p>They do have rain shields, Mercedes supposes. It’s something.</p>
<hr/><p>Mercedes and Felix come back to say they’ve found a promising spot for camping, and Ashe follows them with the rest. It’s so…<i>big</i> up here. That feels like a silly thing to say, but they’re in the middle of absolutely nowhere, with no other people around for leagues and leagues—probably, unless there are bandits after all—and it’s so…</p><p>Quiet isn’t the word, not when the woods are full of the snap of twigs and rustle of pine needles underfoot, the musical chatter of birds, the drone of some kind of insect, the sound of running water somewhere in the near distance. But it’s so quiet other than that. There aren’t any carriages going past, or hooves on cobblestone, or mill workings, or bells, or the constant bustle and chatter of market square. There aren’t any <i>people</i>.</p><p>Peaceful, Ashe supposes, might be the word he wants. It’s a strange thing to think of the woods in the middle of nowhere, when peace has always been Lord Lonato’s home to him. That really was quiet, too, apart from the murmur of well-trained servants and the snap of logs in the fire. The walls were so thick the noises of the city never really made it through.</p><p>But this is nice! It was so kind of Professor Byleth to have brought them here, when it really is so much cooler than it had been in Garreg Mach, and it’s beautiful—</p><p>“Oh wow,” he breathes softly as Mercedes gestures at an elevated clearing. There’s a little dip and then a rise on the other side of it, sparsely fringed with trees, and through the trees nothing but the deepening sky. They must be on the very edge of the mountain. The sound of water is louder here, but the stream or river or whatever it is itself is out of sight. The edges of the clearing are heaped up with coppery piles of pine needles, but the middle is grassy, green and cool and soft-looking. The crowns of the trees frame the sky overhead.</p><p>“Good,” Professor Byleth says. “Let’s get set up.”</p><p>They tether the horses where they can get plenty of grass and then begin the work of putting together their tents. It’s been too hot to bother along the way—they’ve only put a rain shield over their bedrolls—but the air already has the faintest promise of cool to it.</p><p>“Where do we keep the horses overnight?” Ingrid asks, frowning as she picks out four tent stakes. “I don’t like the idea of leaving them that far away from us—”</p><p>“There’s water right there.” Mercedes waves back in the direction that they came. “It’s lovely.”</p><p>Professor Byleth sends Dedue and Sylvain to cut tent poles, while the rest of them start unpacking tents and clearing ground. Sylvain is whistling something as he goes, a tune Ashe almost recognizes but doesn’t quite. They return with some of the white-barked trees.</p><p>“The view is <i>something</i>,” Sylvain says, dropping his armload of branches in the middle of the campground.</p><p>Ashe hurries up with his share of the tent. He’ll be sharing with Sylvain and Felix, on the grounds that he and Felix are both, well, smaller. It had simplified tent assignments. He really hopes that Felix doesn’t argue in his sleep. In the meantime, though, Sylvain briefly pretends to look helpless and then gives it up as a bad job, and Felix is quick and efficient throughout.</p><p>For a few moments, the only sounds are those of mallet on stake, canvas brushing against canvas, and Annette’s yelp of pain as she smacks her hand with the mallet.</p><p>“Do you need help?” Ashe asks the girls when he’s done.</p><p>Ingrid brushes some escaping hair out of her face. “If you could just hold this tent pole—perfect. Thanks.”</p><p>Professor Byleth’s tent is smaller than the others, but Ashe still isn’t sure how she’s managed to get the entire thing up by herself in the time it took everyone else to get theirs together. Dimitri and Dedue, of course, have managed to get theirs done perfectly as well, and are already at work on the latrine trench. Ashe suspects the tent he helped with is drooping a little on one side, but hopefully it’ll be all right.</p><p>“Okay,” Professor Byleth says, looking around. “Good job. Let’s go find that water, Mercedes.”</p>
<hr/><p>Ingrid and Sylvain lead the string of horses to…well, she <i>hopes</i> it’ll be something useful. Mercedes doesn’t really know much about horses, but Professor Byleth clearly knows the area, and she doesn’t <i>think</i> Professor Byleth would have led them too far astray.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Sylvain says, not even looking at her. She hasn’t <i>said</i> anything. She hates it when he does that, except—</p><p>The stream they’d heard earlier must loop partway around the campground. It’s shallow and too wide to jump across where Mercedes leads them, an easy place to lead the horses though a little far to leave them alone. Still, the grass is vibrantly green, and they might be all right overnight, especially if someone on watch walks them for a midnight drink—</p><p>“Ingrid,” Sylvain says. “Relax for once in your life, will you? Do you die like the girl in the fairy tale if you smile, is that it?”</p><p>Ingrid takes a deep breath and looks around. The sky through the trees is golden, hazed over with lavender. The stream water is so clear she can see the speckles on the stones at the bottom and the silvery dart of a passing fish even in the fading light.</p><p>It must drop off somewhere not far away. She can hear the constant, rushing murmur of water over rock, a noise that could easily fade into the background like her own breathing. There are two notes to it, the sweet mellow flow of the stream in front of them and a harder, more challenging noise—a waterfall, maybe, or just water through narrow gaps between rocks, hissing like a high wind.</p><p>“It’s not bad,” she admits.</p><p>Just a little downstream of where they are, it broadens into something that she might almost call a pond if it weren’t for the fact that it’s clearly still moving, and not that deep. Taller boulders break the surface of the water, their rough sides softened with moss and lichen. On the other side of that—she squints against the thickening twilight—maybe the source of the sound of white water she hears?</p><p>The horses go eagerly down to the stream and drink without complaint, which is a relief. A few of them hadn’t liked the water along the way, and Ingrid had had to soak dry handfuls of grasses while Sylvain coaxed them with salt cubes. This, though, they’re willing to drink.</p><p>Ingrid bends and scoops a handful for herself, upstream of the horses thank you very much. It’s bracingly cold and almost sweet. Delicious. She takes another handful and catches Sylvain laughing at her. “What?” she demands. “It’s important to—”</p><p>“It’s your hands,” he says, schooling his face to innocence again. “You’re all dressed up like a rich knight, but you’re drinking water out of your hands like a river nymph.”</p><p>She throws her second handful of water at him. It breaks apart in midair, of course, falling well short, and flies in a scattered glittering down to the grass between them.</p><p>“Oh, it is <i>on</i>,” Sylvain says, but just then they hear the professor calling them.</p><p>With a regretful look, Ingrid abandons the stream.</p>
<hr/><p>The place Professor Byleth has brought them is astonishingly lovely. Dimitri should by now have ceased to be surprised at her gifts, but he has not, and so he marvels at the peace of the woods, the merciful cool of the air, the—</p><p>“Oh,” he breathes, cresting the ridge on the far side of the campground. There are trees growing nearly up to the edge, as if unwilling to cede even a little bit of this exquisite ground, but then the rock drops away and the whole mountain drops away below him, and beyond that the Rusalkan plain, wine-washed with evening. The sky is boundless, and the unfurling mass of rock and earth runs heedlessly into mist and shadow. There is…so <i>much</i> of it.</p><p>“Your highness!” Dedue calls from behind him.</p><p>Dimitri loops his arm around a sturdy-looking aspen and turns back. “Come look!” he says. “Unless—do you object to heights?”</p><p>Dedue’s feet crunch the pine needles. The ones on the ground are too dry to release any scent, but they surely would otherwise. “If it is dangerous—”</p><p>“No, no,” Dimitri says, turning back to the overlook. “Only…vast.” He wants to say more—to say <i>beautiful</i>, or <i>stunning</i>, or <i>breathtaking</i>—but he is a little embarrassed to try, when he should not be enjoying a wilderness survival exercise this much at all. Still, it is…for once, his own smallness against the world feels almost inevitable. Anyone would be this small, on this mountainside, so high up that the birds must be passing below them. It is nothing Dimitri has failed to do.</p><p>He feels Dedue come to his side almost as much as he hears him. The evening air is cooling enough that the sense of another presence is comforting, not stifling. “Look,” Dimitri says again. It’s so lovely; he is glad Dedue is here to watch with him. Shadow swallows up the plains, rushing out from the base of the mountain, thickening beneath every bit of tree and scrub. Night is not so much falling as blooming, rising from the earth all around them, and they are <i>all</i> tiny little creatures clinging to the side of some vast spire of rock.</p><p>Dedue says, “I am looking.”</p><p>“See there,” Dimitri says, pointing to the darker line that is one of the tributaries of the Vila River. It lies across the plain like a coil of black hair, a fallen bit of ribbon. “That is—Dedue, you aren’t looking.” Dedue is, indeed, not looking; he is watching Dimitri, not the blossoming night. “You might have said you objected to heights when I asked. Here, let us go back to the camp. I’ve dallied long enough as it is.”</p><p>A campfire winks brightly against the blue of the evening</p><p>The smell of roasting meat greets them on their return. It may be a rabbit on the spit over the fire; it is about the right size for that. Ashe turns it carefully, intent on the crisping surface. Annette leans against Mercedes’s shoulder as they both watch—whether the flames or dinner, Dimitri could not say. Felix is sharpening a knife, striking faint sparks against the brightness of the campfire. Sylvain stretches out against a fallen log someone has dragged close enough that it can serve as a bench, arms tucked behind his head; Ingrid and Professor Byleth sit at either end of the log.</p><p>“Ah, the wanderer returns,” Sylvain says, sitting up. “Welcome back.”</p>
<hr/><p>It’s <i>cold</i> away from the campfire. Annette didn’t realize at first, because it hadn’t been when they all gathered around it, but once the flames have died down to embers she starts to really notice the breeze, and once they actually get up the air has a real bite to it.</p><p>“Goodness,” Mercie says with a shiver. “The professor wasn’t joking about it getting cool at night!”</p><p>It isn’t miserable—it’s certainly much better than a Faerghus winter—but it’s the kind of weather when it’s lovely to have a cozy blanket, and Annette did pack her bedroll but that’s not much fun to wrap herself up in. It’s not even that warm, but hopefully she’ll be all right.</p><p>“I can take a watch,” Ingrid says, yawning. It isn’t that late, but she isn’t the only one. Annette is frustratingly sleepy too. Maybe it’s the cold, or the rustling whisper of the wind in the trees, or the clear dryness of the air. “I’ll try not to wake you two up when I come back in,” she adds to Annette and Mercie.</p><p>“Who’s for third watch?” Professor Byleth asks. She always takes second, unless someone else asks, which is so nice of her. Back at the Academy Annette would sometimes be up at that hour of the night, working, but it’s a lot harder to do that while traveling.</p><p>“Sylvain,” Felix says.</p><p>Sylvain sputters a protest, but Professor Byleth just nods.</p><p>“I’ll wake you up too,” Sylvain is saying as Annette’s jaw cracks with a yawn of her own and she misses whatever Felix’s response was.</p><p>She’s so <i>tired</i>, and she just can’t explain it at all, but right now her bedroll sounds like the best place in all of Fódlan to be. She crawls into the tent and into her bedroll. The ground is a little bumpy, but she’s definitely slept on worse, and the blankets are warmer than she was afraid they might be. She wakes enough at some point that she vaguely hears Mercie coming into the tent and settling in for the night, and then after that nothing at all until she wakes up.</p><p>It’s morning, probably. Annette is fairly sure it’s morning, at least. She calls a teeny tiny flame to the palm of her hand—not great inside a tent, but it’s less bright than displaying her crest would be—and sees Mercie asleep on her back looking unsettlingly like one of those effigies on a tomb, and Ingrid curled up on her side with her face half-hidden by her braid.</p><p>Somewhere outside, a bird lifts its voice in a cheerful call. It doesn’t sound like an owl, or a nightingale, so Annette carefully puts out her flame before she changes from her nightshift into her last clean outfit and pulls her shoes on.</p><p>She manages to do it without crashing into the tent or falling over <i>once</i>, which she will make Mercie and Ingrid thank her for after they wake up on their own. There’s just enough space for her to crawl down the middle of the tent without disturbing either of the others, and then she’s outside.</p><p>The stars are fading in the sky, which has turned a clear deep grey. Sylvain is sitting by the ashes of the campfire, peeling the bark off a twig. He looks up and waves as she approaches.</p><p>“Good morning,” Annette whispers. “Quiet night?”</p><p>“As you heard,” Sylvain whispers back. The birds are getting louder, their song echoing from tree to tree around the clearing. “You’re up early.”</p><p>“I went to bed way too early.” Annette starts gathering bits of wood. Professor Byleth will definitely want tea, and Mercie and probably Sylvain himself. They’ll need enough of a fire to heat the water—and she should get water, too, while she’s at it, and what is the best way to heat water for <i>laundry</i> going to be? Should she just heat some stones and drop them in the stream? It probably won’t do any good.</p><p>Sylvain shrugs, a broad, open gesture much louder than his voice. “Maybe you were tired.”</p><p>“There’s too much to do!” Annette says. Satisfied with her pile of kindling and small logs, she calls fire into the middle of the heap. Light flares, darkening the shadows around them. “Oh, I was wondering—how far into Clio von Becke’s <i>Elemental Uses of Reason</i> have you gotten?”</p><p>“Uh…” Sylvain says, looking trapped. “I glanced at it?”</p><p>Annette glares at him, but she’s not sure the dancing firelight gives enough illumination for him to tell. “Well, you’re good at <i>glancing</i> at books. Did you look at Chapter Three yet? I had a question about—”</p><p>“Nope,” Sylvain says. “Pretty much just the title page. She’s pretty cute in the engraving, don’t you think?”</p><p>“<i>Ugh</i>.” He’s lying, she’s sure of it, but if he won’t talk to her about manipulating wind and fire magic together she’ll have to wait until she gets back to the Academy and can find Lysithea. Magic theory isn’t really Professor Byleth’s thing, even though she’s very good at helping them with practical uses of existing spells. She’s started teaching Felix, too, but Annette already knows asking him won’t work any more than asking Mercie will.</p><p>Arguing with Sylvain won’t do any good, though, she already knows <i>that</i> much, so she jumps up and goes to take a look around the campsite. It’s getting light enough, and she barely saw anything last night, between getting the tent set up and helping with dinner and falling asleep almost right away after.</p><p>“Annette!” Sylvain yells after her. “Hang on a second—the overlook’s that way, let me come with you.”</p><p>She is almost completely certain that she’s not going to fall off the side of a mountain, but she waits anyway, just in case. Sylvain catches up to her quickly, staying within arm’s reach as she walks. “I was thinking,” Annette tries, because you have to be sneaky with Sylvain and she should have remembered that, “that it just doesn’t make sense to be able to mix two different types of magic, right? Wind and thunder, or fire and wind?”</p><p>“C’mon, Annette,” Sylvain says, even as he guides her around a rock tilting sideways across the little path. “You know I’m not the right guy to ask that kind of question.”</p><p>“Well, who else am I going to ask?” Annette asks. It’s so frustrating! She’s glad to be here at the Officers’ Academy, she wouldn’t leave everyone here and go back to the School of Sorcery, but she wishes they focused a little more on magic theory here and she didn’t have to figure it all out herself. Or even if someone would just <i>work</i> with her. If Sylvain would just stop pretending to be stupid, when she <i>wishes</i> she understood things that quickly—</p><p>The trees open up in front of them, and there’s the eastern sky over Rusalka—primrose fading into sea-green fading into a blue still so deep it looks grey. The stars have gone out, and the moon has set, but far in the east there must be clouds. Annette can’t see them, the grey of their bulk lost in their own shadow and the grey of the sky, but the sun catches their undersides, picking them out in great curves of copper and rose and flame.</p><p>The top of one of the clouds kindles, and below it so does the horizon. The air is thick with night, and the light pierces it slowly, almost like it’s reaching through fog. Birds clamor behind them, their voices running together into a formless rush of sound.</p><p>“We should get back,” Sylvain says regretfully. “Don’t want the professor waking up and thinking I’ve taken off.”</p><p>“Right,” Annette says, and turns to go, with one last look over her shoulder at the long lines of shadow racing away from light, all across the plain.</p>
<hr/><p>“Today,” Professor Byleth announces, “weapons practice, then fishing. Rest after lunch.”</p><p>“And then what?” Felix asks after a moment. This day is too empty.</p><p>Professor Byleth appears to consider it. Has she even planned this at all? “Swimming, if it heats up. Can you all swim?”</p><p>“It’s not that cold,” Sylvain says, because anywhere would be warmer than Gautier. Even Fraldarius is warmer than Gautier, most of the year. Felix doesn’t have much to say for it, but there is that.</p><p>Mercedes says, “Swimming? Oh dear.”</p><p>“Can you not swim?” Dedue asks her. He sounds concerned, as if it’d be that easy for him to worry about someone other than the boar.</p><p>“<i>I</i> can’t,” Ashe says quietly. “I didn’t…learn, before Lord Lonato adopted me, and then afterward there just wasn’t really time, when he had so much else to teach me.” His shoulders droop. “He said there was still more, but…”</p><p>“Swimming,” Professor Byleth says. “If it’s too cold, then when we get back to the monastery.”</p><p>Weapons practice in the woods is…different than weapons practice in the training hall. It’s brighter, louder. Part of Felix’s mind is constantly circling around, looking for danger—he’s outside, he doesn’t practice outside, it must be a real fight. Professor Byleth beats him twice in a row and then trades off with the boar, taking Ingrid as her new partner and leaving Felix with—ugh. She thinks she’s <i>clever</i>.</p><p>The trees make bars of light and shadow, sunlight splashing through them irregularly. There are bands of brilliant color and bands that look dark as twilight next to them. Felix blinks the glare of green out of his eyes and goes in swinging.</p><p>The boar is unquestionably skilled in battle. That’s always been true. It’s no use pretending otherwise—that’s what makes him so dangerous. Here among the fir and pines and aspen, the air summer-sweet but still needing the sunlight to take the chill off, they could almost be back in Faerghus, prince and squire.</p><p>Felix feels the weight of his training sword change in his hands, become both easier to swing and harder to stop.</p><p>“No Crests,” Professor Byleth shouts.</p><p>The boar gets his lance up just in time to block, as if he’s fighting with a quarterstaff, but sword bends and lance shatters at the impact. Professor Byleth spins and drags Ingrid behind her, shielding them both with her cloak as splinters go flying. The boar, who’s used to breaking things, ducks. Felix barely manages to twist out of the way, but as he adjusts his balance and Professor Byleth lets Ingrid go and turns to face him he can see they’re all all right.</p><p>Her big blank eyes are more than a little unsettling, like one of those stories about the hollow-backed keepers of the forest.</p><p>“It was an accident,” Felix says through gritted teeth. He <i>can’t</i> always control it, even in training, and Professor Byleth should know that because he’s seen her Crest activate while she’s working on her own weapons training—especially when she’s sparring with Catherine or Seteth. No harm done here either, especially with the boar’s Blaiddyd strength.</p><p>Professor Byleth says, “Switch.” Her tone is inflexible.</p><p>“I don’t mind,” the boar tells her. He sounds so damnably <i>earnest</i> about it, like he used to when they were younger and he <i>didn’t mind</i> going to Galatea (the royal family always traveled with supplies and brought gifts, to make up for the trouble of their visits) or <i>didn’t mind</i> joining Sylvain to play the bandits in a game of knights and bandits (because Ingrid and—ugh—Felix himself so badly wanted to be the knights).</p><p>Like he <i>didn’t mind</i> taking a command two years ago, against the Rebellion of ’78, with Felix instead of a more experienced squire at his side.</p><p>Tailtean pines have a sweetness mingled with the pungent sharpness of their resin, something that almost makes them smell like lavender. What they smell like is <i>home</i>, and Felix has managed for two years to avoid the boar at home. The whole thing is a bad joke—some pathetic memory that should be dead, stirred back to life by an herb-scented wood.</p><p>“Felix?” Professor Byleth asks. She and D—the boar are both looking expectantly at him.</p><p>“It shouldn’t happen again,” Felix says. It usually doesn’t—there’s only so much energy to go around. Too late, he realizes that he should have jumped at this opportunity to switch partners. Ingrid, or Sylvain if she wants him testing himself against someone taller.</p><p>Professor Byleth nods and turns back to Ingrid, who raises her lance in a guard position.</p><p>“If I only take the sharpened head off of one of the real lances,” the boar says, “that should suffice.”</p><p>“I don’t care,” Felix says. “Do what you please. It makes no difference to me.”</p>
<hr/><p>Annette is just not…good with a bow, but Ashe is pleasantly surprised by Mercedes. She’s so dreamy he wouldn’t have thought it of her, but Professor Byleth wanted everyone to at least <i>try</i> to be able to attack from a distance, and, well, here they are.</p><p>“I hit it again!” Mercedes says delightedly. The feathered shaft of her arrow shivers with the impact against the fallen log they’re using as a target. It’s a pretty big target, but after the second time Annette missed <i>completely</i> wide of the circles Ashe had smudged on there with some charcoal from the fire he’d figured it would be better to make things easy to start with. “This really isn’t that hard, is it. I had thought it would be <i>much</i> trickier to use weapons…”</p><p>“Bows are very different.” Ashe stretches out his fingers. “I’ve had a little practice using axes, and Professor Byleth thinks I’d be better with a sword, but with bows it’s really all in the mind and the eye.”</p><p>Mercedes nods. “I can do that much easily!” He really can’t picture her with an axe or lance, or even a sword, but the bow seems to be working for her.</p><p>Then again, he wouldn’t have pictured Annette with an axe either, but when she kept missing even the entire log she’d gone and asked Professor Byleth if she could brush up her axe skills instead, and instead of laughing Professor Byleth had agreed. She’s working with Dedue now, while Sylvain alternates between lance and axe in demonstration, and it should be funny—she’s so <i>tiny</i>, and even the lightweight training axe is huge compared to her—but she clearly does know what she’s doing, even though Sylvain is over a head taller than her and Dedue is…a lot more than that. They’re both being really careful of her size, too, especially Dedue.</p><p>“Ashe?” Mercedes asks.</p><p>Ashe looks back at her. “Sorry! I got distracted.”</p><p>“That’s what <i>I’m</i> supposed to say,” Mercedes says with a soft laugh. “Can I try to hit the circles now, do you think?”</p><p>“Sure,” Ashe says. “But if you don’t, just keep trying, okay?”</p><p>Mercedes angles her shoulders and aims again.</p><p>Ashe takes the opportunity for some practice shots of his own, trying to cluster three arrows around a knot in a dead tree about fifty paces away. He gets one about where he wanted it and hits the tree with the second but misses with the third, which isn’t bad at all. Maybe Professor Byleth will let him try for his Sniper exam soon, so he can <i>really</i> help in battle.</p><p>“Wow,” Mercedes says. “I think I did pretty well for a beginner, but you were really impressive.”</p><p>“Oh no, not really, but thanks for saying so.” Ashe looks away from his tree to hers. “But you hit the second circle! Great job, Mercedes.”</p><p>“Oh, nice!” Annette calls. “Good work, Mercie!”</p><p>Mercedes beams.</p><p>Sylvain reverses his axe and taps Annette in the ribs with the handle. “You, however, are dead.”</p><p>She stamps her foot. “I was just—”</p><p>“In close fighting, you cannot be distracted,” Dedue says gravely. “Look how quickly things can go awry.” He steps away from her and lifts his own axe, ready to swing it. Sylvain moves in to oppose him.</p><p>There’s a moment when the two of them just watch each other, then Sylvain shrugs and looks away—glances away, really, just that, as if he’s heard someone call and is checking to see if it was his attention they wanted. Dedue brings his axe around under Sylvain’s guard and up against the side of his stomach in an impressively fast movement, then checks it inches away from actually hitting Sylvain.</p><p>Ashe remembers to close his mouth.</p><p>“All right,” Annette says glumly. “I’ll try harder next time. It’s just—there’s so much <i>happening</i>!”</p><p>“If there’s too much happening, you’d better not pick up House Dominic’s legacy,” Sylvain says, not smiling at all. He switches the axe back out for the lance again. “Thanks for not opening me up, Dedue. I’d hate to ruin another shirt. All right, Annette, you ready to learn about parrying?”</p><p>Annette squares her shoulders and brings her chin up. “Just watch me.”</p><p>“No, <i>you</i> watch,” Sylvain says with a wink. “Okay. Here goes.”</p><p>They have three arrows left, of the ones Professor Byleth had said they could spare for training. Some of the ones they’ve already shot should still be good, but not all of them. “Do you want to try twice more?” Ashe asks Mercedes. “Or should I take the shots?”</p><p>“Oh, you take them,” Mercedes says cheerfully. “I’d like to end this bow practice feeling wonderful about my progress, and if I miss with one of my other shots I won’t feel nearly as good.”</p><p>That doesn’t make any sense at all to Ashe, but he’s glad for the opportunity for more practice anyway. He tries for a line up the trunk of that same fifty-paces-distant tree and this time gets all three arrows in. He’ll get the rest but leave those five for Professor Byleth to see when she’s done, and until then he and Mercedes will watch the rest of the training.</p>
<hr/><p>When Professor Byleth calls off weapons practice it’s earlier than Ingrid would have expected, although they are outdoors and do need to stop before it gets too hot. Still, it’s <i>very</i> early to just…be done working for the day, surely?</p><p>Then Professor Byleth says, “Magic practice next.” That makes much more sense.</p><p>Ingrid settles against a tree once she’s stretched. It’s warm, or at least <i>she’s</i> warm. Her waterskin was in the shade, and she’d filled it when the stream was still icy-cold with night, but she’s gone through enough of it that what’s left is tepid at best. She’ll refill it after the four who are about to continue with a lot of practice—five, counting Professor Byleth—have had a chance to get more water themselves if they need it.</p><p>“You,” Professor Byleth says, looking from Ingrid to Dimitri to Ashe. “Work on getting the shape of your Heals right.” She doesn’t bother telling Dedue to; he needs help going over the outlines of the spell, things the rest of them learned just growing up in Fódlan.</p><p>“Of course, Professor,” Dimitri says.</p><p>It’s useful, Ingrid has to admit. It’s exhausting enough that she wouldn’t want to rely on it outside of an emergency—she’s just not very good at any kind of magic, even though at least she doesn’t struggle against it like Dedue does—but it’s nice to be able to know that if she or one of her allies is ever in particularly bad circumstances she’ll be able to do <i>something</i> to help them out.</p><p>Felix is just as bad at Reason magic as Dedue is at Faith, but he throws himself against it anyway, determined to take that advantage away from his opponents. It comes easier for Sylvain and of course Mercedes and Annette, but the two of them had been at the School of Sorcery already. It’s no surprise they’re good at it. It <i>is</i> strange to think of Sylvain as a warlock, even though he hasn’t put his lance down. Growing up, he was always laughing and practical and very…Ingrid doesn’t know what to call it. Very <i>real</i>, she supposes. Magic is real, of course, but it’s a kind of real that doesn’t usually bother them in Eastern Faerghus in the same way as swords and lances do, not like this.</p><p>But now Felix is scowling his way through a set of gestures meant to call lightning, his motions quick as if he’s holding a sword instead, while Mercedes mimics the same gestures much more smoothly. Now Sylvain wrings sparks out of the air, gathering them into a ball of fire the size of his fist, and Annette shakes her head and repeats the incantation, cutting herself off just before she conjures more fire than they want. Now Ingrid herself, and Dimitri, and Ashe practice the motion and the words to close up deadly wounds in time to save a life, and lesser wounds as if they’d never been.</p><p>It’s so <i>strange</i>. Ingrid isn’t sure she’ll ever get used to it, or how the memory of it will fit when she’s back in Galatea or, well, wherever her father wants her to be.</p><p>“Ingrid?” Ashe asks hesitantly. “Are you all right?”</p><p>“I’m okay,” Ingrid says. She hopes it was quickly enough to keep them from worrying.</p><p>Dimitri frowns. “You had a strange look on your face. As if you were…missing something, perhaps.”</p><p>“I’m all right.” There’s no point in missing something that she hasn’t even lost, after all. She smiles for them and goes back to practicing—hands here, curve, sweep, fingers out. It’s like a country dance, or trick riding, but only using her arms instead of her whole body.</p><p>Professor Byleth leaves the group working on their Reason magic and comes over to join Ingrid’s. She nods, pleased, when each of them demonstrate. “Okay,” she says. “You three, dismissed. Dedue, the chant.”</p><p>Ingrid stretches again, relieved that she hasn’t stiffened up too badly. After a moment she says, “…Are either of you coming?”</p><p>“Oh, right!” Ashe says, and jumps up.</p><p>“It would hardly be appropriate for me to call myself finished for the day when so many of you are still working,” Dimitri says, but at least he gets up and stretches as well.</p><p>“You’ve worked very hard,” Professor Byleth says to him. He ducks his head, so Ingrid can only guess at his expression. “Now relax.”</p><p>Dimitri resettles himself against the side of a massive moss-furred boulder. “I’ll just relax here until everyone else is all done, Professor,” he offers.</p><p>Ingrid does not roll her eyes at her prince, but it’s a near thing. She and Ashe leave him watching Professor Byleth and Dedue practice very basic magic, which is not nearly interesting enough to be worth giving up a walk or getting started on fishing.</p><p>“So,” Ingrid says, as they head back to the campsite. “Have you had a chance to do much fishing, since you haven’t gone swimming?”</p><p>“A little,” Ashe says with a sad smile. “Christophe taught me how. I still like to do it—it reminds me of him. And the monastery fishpond is really very nice.”</p><p>It is. Occasionally she runs into Seteth there, and he’s always very pleasant. Sometimes it’s that redheaded archer from the Golden Deer House—Leonie?—or Count Hevring’s son. Often it’s Professor Byleth herself. “I’m not always patient enough for fishing,” Ingrid admits, “but I do like fish!”</p><p>“Fish are definitely good,” Ashe agrees. “It’s pretty out there, but it’s <i>so</i> much more beautiful up here.” He looks around, wide-eyed. “I can’t really get used to it.”</p><p>“It is nice,” Ingrid says. A raven calls harshly overhead, its cry a vibrating low note under the higher chattering of songbirds and the drone of a bee somewhere. The pine needles are soft underfoot, though you’d never think it when one of them works tip-first into a bedroll. “So you never got the chance to spend much time outside before you came to Garreg Mach? I wouldn’t have guessed—you’re doing really well at it.”</p><p>Ashe brightens. “Really? Thank you!”</p><p>She figures she might as well water the horses again while everyone else is still working, and starts leading them down to the pond two at a time. They’re all fascinated by the thick, sleek grasses growing along the side of the stream, and since as far as Ingrid can tell it’s normal grass gone overenthusiastic with plentiful water and rich soil she lets them eat their fill. Ashe starts walking along the pond and stream, looking—she guesses—for signs of fish, or at least a good place to start fishing from.</p><p>“Horses are harder than the outdoors,” he says, when she’s on the third trip down. “They’re just…big.”</p><p>“Well, we couldn’t ride them if they weren’t,” Ingrid says. She rubs Dimitri’s mare’s shoulder affectionately. He hadn’t brought a horse from Faerghus—none of them have—but this stubborn old girl has served him very well. It’s been good to see him getting to ride again. He hasn’t had much of a chance since his father’s death.</p><p>“I know,” Ashe says, straightening up from a crouch by some rocks.</p><p>Ingrid nudges the mare and Annette’s gelding along toward the water. “Do you want me to practice with you when we get back to the monastery? I’d be happy to help.”</p><p>“Really? That’d be great, if you don’t mind!”</p><p>She smiles back at him. “I don’t mind at all. I like horses, and I’m happy to help a friend.”</p>
<hr/><p>Fishing goes about how Sylvain expected it would. Okay, he hadn’t really properly formed the mental image of Professor Byleth standing barefoot and bare-legged in the middle of a running stream—she’d stopped by her tent to take her lace stockings off beforehand, which is smart but also a very strange look on her—but definitely her weird little fishing trance, and definitely the fact that she catches more fish than the rest of them put together.</p><p>Annette <i>does</i> fall into the stream this time. She comes up dripping wet and shivering, and Mercedes coos, “Oh, Annie” and wraps her in her shawl before hugging her. Sylvain gives serious thought to also falling into the stream, but Mercedes probably won’t buy it.</p><p>Tragic, really. Some people have all the luck.</p><p>“It might be a little cold for swimming,” Ingrid says, frowning after Annette and Mercedes as they go back to the campsite to change. “What do you think, Professor?”</p><p>Professor Byleth shrugs. The water makes little ripples around her calves as it goes by.</p><p>“It’ll be warmer in the afternoon,” Sylvain says, picking his fishing rod back up—he hasn’t even been trying to catch anything, it’s much more fun watching everyone else—and casting it lazily out into…somewhere in the stream, probably.</p><p>Felix gets extremely competitive, which Sylvain could tell him is <i>not</i> the way to reel <i>anything</i> in. He’s just too tense, and he absolutely refuses to take any of Sylvain’s very good advice thank you very much about how to handle that. Seems like the fish can tell too.</p><p>Dedue and Ashe catch one small fish each. Ashe lets his go again.</p><p>Dimitri breaks his fishing rod.</p><p>“Okay,” Professor Byleth says eventually, when her shadow has vanished into the rocks beneath her feet. She picks up her string of three fish. “Lunchtime.”</p><p>Annette has the fire blazing brightly when the rest of them get back to the campsite, and she and Mercedes have gathered some plants—dandelion greens, wild turnips, and more chives and stag’s garlic. Bilberries and raspberries rest like a handful of jewels on top of a handkerchief.</p><p>Dedue prepares the fish and greens, using a lidded skillet that Sylvain would not have thought to bring. Good thing nobody left him in charge of preparations. They’re all very hungry by the time it’s finally ready, and even Mercedes enjoys the meal.</p><p>The midday rest…stretches out.</p><p>Sylvain remembers not to fall asleep in the sun, but he does doze off under a tree twisted like a clay rope, and wakes up at some point. The light through the trees is hazy, as if it’s going through cloudy water, and the shadows of the trunks seem like he could reach out and touch them. A young oak among the pines is backlit by the sun, its leaves so fiercely green against all the dusty light that they look almost wet.</p><p>He sits up. Professor Byleth has fallen asleep too, curled up against the far side of the fallen log she’s been using as a bench at mealtimes. Annette sits tailor-style in the shadow of her tent, a book open on her lap. Dimitri has managed to fall asleep with his head on Dedue’s shoulder, and Dedue is holding extremely still. Sylvain can’t blame him. Felix, Ashe, and Mercedes are nowhere to be seen. At first Sylvain can’t spot Ingrid either, and then he sees the bright blaze of her hair amid the grass.</p><p>A quick check of the tents—Dedue’s eyes follow him; Annette doesn’t even notice him moving until he’s two paces away from her—confirms that Mercedes and Ashe are asleep, which means Felix will be in one of two places.</p><p>Sylvain checks the stream first, but it’s not that hot. He finds Felix in the clearing they’d used for weapons practice earlier instead, going through his footwork.</p><p>“Hey,” Sylvain says, leaning against a tree.</p><p>Felix completes a sharp turn. “Don’t startle me,” he snaps, which is practically Felix-ese for <i>Hello</i>, these days.</p><p>“Some idea of a rest you have.” Sylvain picks up a branch, considers it, and drops it again. They’re on vacation. He doesn’t have to fight Felix to get more than half a minute of conversation out of him, and he’s not going to.</p><p>“I rested.” Felix brings one arm up in a clear guard position, even though the sword itself isn’t there, and suddenly flicks it forward. The sword he isn’t holding would dart past his opponent’s guard, right there. He’s quick, and he’s only getting better, and he works <i>so much</i> at it that Sylvain wants to scream at just the thought. He’s constantly throwing himself against failure and daring it to give, and daring, and daring, and one day it won’t give and <i>then</i> what? Has Felix ever thought of that? No he hasn’t, clearly. “Now I’m training. You’ve seen that pond—we’re not going to be able to do anything except splash around in it.”</p><p>Sylvain sighs, loudly enough for Felix to hear him over the sound of his own quick breaths. “Yeah, but it’ll be <i>fun</i>.”</p><p>Felix turns to glare at him. It’s ruined by his hair tumbling down, which makes him look…soft. He sweeps it irritably back out of his face, then unties the cord holding the rest of it in place and re-ties the whole thing, fingers working quickly until he’s all sharp lines and edges again.</p><p>Sylvain puts his hands up. “Look, if you want to tell the professor you’re not going swimming…”</p><p>“…Are the rest of them awake yet?” Felix asks, which is absolutely Felix-ese for <i>I’m scared of the professor</i>. To be fair, Sylvain…doesn’t completely blame him. Professor Byleth isn’t scary, but when the Ashen Demon catches him with her blank unimpressed stare he feels the tiniest little chill down his spine. It’s just self-preservation.</p><p>“Annette is,” Sylvain says. “And Dedue.”</p><p>“Right,” Felix says. For a moment Sylvain half-expects him to sheathe his sword, but he wasn’t holding one. “Let’s go, then.”</p><p>They don’t end up swimming that afternoon, because by the time they get back Annette has fallen asleep over her textbook and none of the others are awake yet. Felix scowls about it, but doesn’t actually wake anyone up, even Dimitri.</p><p>Eventually Ashe gets up, and that wakes up Ingrid and Professor Byleth. Their conversation wakes up Dimitri, who starts apologizing profusely to Dedue, which is noisy enough that Annette jumps up and kicks one of the tent ropes, which, well, if Mercedes wasn’t awake before then half the tent collapsing around her certainly has her awake now.</p><p>Dimitri actually stops apologizing to Dedue to tell Annette it’s not her fault, which is a lie but a very nice one. Maybe he has some potential after all.</p><p>“I’m all right, Annie,” Mercedes says, finally managing to escape the canvas. “It was just an accident! There’s no harm done.”</p><p>Annette gives a wavering sigh of relief.</p><p>“I’m going to go get dinner,” Felix says abruptly. “I’ll be back.”</p><p>“Take Ashe with you,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>Ashe hurries over to the weapons pile to collect his bow. “All right!”</p><p>“Come on, then,” Felix says.</p>
<hr/><p>The sky overhead is reflected red and purple with sunset as they finish dinner, and deepens. Night drifts down from the top of the sky to the horizon, and stars wink and flicker to life in its wake. This time, they all stay put, and Dedue does not have to go searching for Dimitri. Still, he does not regret the view of the plains from last night, or of the soft wonder on Dimitri’s face.</p><p>“The stars are so bright here,” Ashe says softly.</p><p>“I wonder if it’s because we’re closer to them.” Mercedes’s voice is dreamy. “It’s a shame there can’t be skies like this inside a cathedral. It’s so beautiful.”</p><p>The fire is dying down to embers, and Dedue does not stir it back up. None of the others do, either; they all, for once, seem content to sit and look. Sylvain slides off his seat to lie on his back and look up, then sits back up with a mutter about dew.</p><p>“Just a minute!” Annette says. She jumps up and vanishes into the darkness. A moment later, the bright shape of her Crest shines out, illuminating the upturned curve of her palm and the side of her face. She goes into her tent. The light blinks out, and some time passes before Annette returns to the circle of firelight, clutching her bedroll. “Some of us can fit on this if I untie it,” she says.</p><p>“We can get mine too,” Ashe offers. He leaves without a light, but fortunately comes back without incident as well.</p><p>Meanwhile, Annette has untied the edges of her bedroll. She carries it to the open grass a little way away from the fire. They trail after her—Ashe as well, once he has done the same. Professor Byleth follows with interest, but waves away the offer of a spot on one of the bedrolls, which they have arranged side by side. She sits down in the damp grass without concern.</p><p>Dedue takes a seat at the edge of one of the bedrolls, at Dimitri’s side, and looks up. The sky is ablaze with scattered points of light, pricked out of the night’s veil. The silhouettes of the trees are opaque against the depth of the sky behind them.</p><p>Annette says, “I found the Wheel!”</p><p>“Are you sure?” Mercedes asks, with a teasing lilt to her voice.</p><p>“…Almost sure,” Annette says. “It <i>should</i> be the Wheel this time.”</p><p>“There’s the Tower,” Dimitri says, more quietly. “And the High Priest…”</p><p>Sylvain says, “Do you have different constellations in Duscur?”</p><p>Dedue had not expected the question. “We do,” he says carefully.</p><p>“Oh, tell us, please,” Mercedes says, abandoning Annette and the Wheel of Fate—which, if Dedue remembers right, is a constellation made of a circle of eleven stars, so it is no wonder Annette cannot be sure she has found it correctly. “Here, come closer to the middle of the blanket.”</p><p>“I am not sure…”</p><p>“If you don’t want to tell us then don’t,” Ashe says. He sounds sad, which was not Dedue’s intention at all. “Or if it’s private, of course. But I’d like to hear about them if you can tell us!”</p><p>Mercedes says, “Oh yes. Please?”</p><p>“If you have to listen to us try to figure out which set of stars is Galina the Lion-Tamer the least we can do is listen to you tell us about ones you know,” Sylvain says.</p><p>Dimitri says, as if he is considering each word carefully, “You should, if you would like.”</p><p>Somehow Dedue ends up lying on his back in the center of one of the bedrolls with Mercedes on one side and Ashe on the other, gesturing up at the broad river of light across the sky. “The two stars just below the Star River, one redder than the other.”</p><p>“Mm-hm,” Mercedes says encouragingly.</p><p>“There are three stars a little below them, above that pine.”</p><p>Ashe shifts position. The evening is cool, and both he and Mercedes had already been close enough that Dedue can feel the warmth radiating between them. “I see them.”</p><p>“The story is that a hunter offered his own eye to the…” To the god of the hunt, but it seems a tactless thing to say in front of these Fódlani worshippers all the same. Professor Byleth is employed by the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros, after all.</p><p>“Is there a god for hunting, in Duscur?” Mercedes’s voice is calm and even. She is so matter-of-fact about it that she almost seems to challenge anyone who questions such a thing.</p><p>“There is,” Dedue says. “The story is that the hunter offered his eye to her, for the ability to see faultlessly even in the shadows and through the trees. She accepted it. But he was not satisfied with that, and offered her his left arm if the spears he threw with his right would never miss. She accepted that as well. Still he was not satisfied, and offered her his life if he could first slay the White Elk of the North.” He points to the other side of the tall pine. “The White Elk is there. He had been a favorite of the god of the hunt’s. She liked the challenge he gave men who thought themselves too bold. But she took the hunter’s sacrifice all the same, and then pinned him to the sky—just as you see him now—as a warning to others who would make the same demand.”</p><p>There is silence. It is not a very kind story, perhaps, and they have no need of its warning. He should have found a different constellation—</p><p>“Well, I think she was very correct,” Mercedes says. “What a greedy man.”</p><p>“Which one is the White Elk?” Ashe asks, leaning closer yet. The breeze stirs his hair, and Dedue almost thinks a strand of it brushes his face.</p><p>Five stars curve in the space beyond the pine. Dedue points, tracing the arc of its broad antlers. “Those five bright ones. Below are four more that make up its body.”</p><p>“I see,” Ashe says.</p><p>Mercedes pushes herself up on one elbow. “I can’t…”</p><p>Dedue hastily moves out of her way so she does not have to lean across his body. Although their classmates are hardly prone to gossip, it would still be improper.</p><p>“Got any others?” Sylvain asks.</p><p>For a moment, Dedue does not. There is Nil the Wounded Whale, breaching the Star River above them, but that is no kinder a story. Then he sees Aidae’s Crown hanging low over the trees to the northeast. “One more,” he says. He has talked enough already, for one night. “There are seven stars just over the woods, east of that leafed tree. A woman named Aidae wove crowns of flowers, much like the tradition of garlands in Fódlan. One year there was a plague, and she gave crowns to the sick when she tended them, to bring them comfort and hope.”</p><p>“That’s lovely,” Mercedes sighs.</p><p>Aidae had died—the stories of Duscur, like the old tales of Faerghus itself from before the Empire, are not gentle ones. But one of her crowns hangs in the stars still, and Mercedes is not wrong.</p>
<hr/><p>Clouds begin to sweep across the sky, blotting out the stars on the eastern horizon, and it’s definitely getting chilly. “We should go back to the fire,” Mercedes says, sitting up and wrapping her shawl tighter around herself. “Oh, I know, I could tell everyone a ghost story!”</p><p>“Oh <i>no</i>,” Annie says immediately. “Mercie, your stories are just blood-curdling, and we’re out in the middle of the woods!”</p><p>“They can’t be that bad,” says Sylvain.</p><p>Everyone is getting up and gathering their things. “Just one,” Mercedes says coaxingly to Annie. “I’ll protect you.”</p><p>“I don’t know…” Ashe says.</p><p>Dimitri sounds unusually hesitant as he says, “I don’t think…well. What do you think, Professor?”</p><p>“<i>One</i> story,” Professor Byleth says. “Nothing set in the woods.”</p><p>Mercedes mentally sets aside the story about the footsteps that walked around the tent. It’s a shame, because that’s such a good one, but Professor Byleth is probably right, it might be a little too scary for some people when they’re all actually sleeping in tents. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll be sure to think of a good one!” She shouldn’t tell them anything about dead loved ones, either, not when so many of them have lost family to war. But there are still plenty of stories that that leaves…</p><p>They get everything back to the campfire and Felix builds the fire back up while Ingrid helps Ashe and Annette re-tie their bedrolls.</p><p>“Okay,” Mercedes says when everyone is settled. “A friend of mine was traveling from his house to his aunt’s house in Fhirdiad, and the trip was too long to make in one night. A terrible storm broke out in the evening, but fortunately my friend was able to find a chapel in the woods. The chapel itself was ruined, but the caretaker’s cottage was still in good condition.”</p><p>Ashe pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.</p><p>Mercedes smiles encouragingly at him and continues. “The windows of the cottage had glass in them too—it must have been left over from the chapel. So my friend went inside and barred the door and settled in for the night. There was still wood for a fire, so he was able to start drying his clothes and even heat up water for tea. After he lay down, though, he heard a thumping noise at the door.”</p><p>“Sorry, a <i>thumping</i> noise?” Sylvain asks. “Not a knock, or a rap?”</p><p>“A thumping noise,” Mercedes repeats with a stern look.</p><p>Sylvain stretches a little too nonchalantly, leaving his arms braced against the back of the log. Ingrid, to one side of him, gives him a suspicious look. Felix, at the other end of the log, moves even further away, though it’s not that large and he’s in danger of falling off. “All right. Carry on.”</p><p>“My friend heard this thumping noise and thought maybe another traveler had been caught in the storm, so he went to the window and looked out, but he didn’t see anything. It was still raining and windy, and if he opened the door he’d get soaked again. He thought maybe a branch had just blown against the door, so he went back to bed.”</p><p>Sylvain opens his mouth. Mercedes very pointedly shakes her head at him. He closes his mouth again.</p><p>Satisfied, she goes on. “It happened again, louder this time, but still he couldn’t see anything outside the door. The third time it happened he shouted, ‘Is anyone out there?’”</p><p>Annie tucks herself up against Mercedes’s side. Ashe’s hands are curled around his upper arms, he’s holding his knees so tightly, and when Dimitri reaches out to pat him on the shoulder he jumps and squeaks, and then looks embarrassed about it. He shouldn’t, really, it was very cute.</p><p>“As soon as he said that, a terrible screeching noise started outside the door. My friend jumped back into bed and pulled the blankets up over his head, hoping that if whatever was outside looked through the windows it wouldn’t see him. The noise continued for a while and then finally stopped. My friend realized the fire had gone out, but he was too afraid that if he lit it again the thing would come back.”</p><p>Felix crosses his arms but inches a little bit back toward the middle of the log.</p><p>“In the morning,” Mercedes says, lowering her voice so everyone has to lean in, “my friend opened the door and saw that the whole outside of it had been carved up by <i>enormous</i> claws. They must have been the size of his longest finger at least. If he had opened that door, he would <i>never</i> have made it back alive.”</p><p>A log snaps as it falls into the fire. Sylvain jumps, then glances around and laughs nervously.</p><p>Mercedes smiles sweetly at him. “It’s a good thing it wasn’t too bad a story, right?” she asks.</p><p>“Hah, uh, I’m so sorry if I offended you, Mercedes,” Sylvain says. “I just meant, you know, we’re all…experienced fighters, and adults or just about, that’s all.”</p><p>“Does this happen a lot in Faerghus?” Professor Byleth asks politely. She’s been watching Mercedes with grave interest the whole time.</p><p>Mercedes looks at her in confusion. “What?”</p><p>“Invisible beasts,” Professor Byleth says. “My father and I haven’t met any.”</p><p>“Well…no…” Mercedes says. “Probably not, anyway.” She’s fairly sure it’s not true, and it certainly never happened to a friend of hers. But it’s a very good story, and she’s proud of it nevertheless.</p>
<hr/><p>Felix is absolutely not frightened by the thought of invisible beasts with claws as long as his fingers—he looked at his fingers, and he admits that would be a challenging foe to fight—for the simple reason that invisible beasts aren’t real.</p><p>Probably.</p><p>Ashe is jumpy as they settle into their bedrolls, though. Sylvain has shaken off the moment of alarm he’d had earlier as Mercedes finished her story, and Felix is hardly going to be pathetic enough to twitch at every sound, but Ashe is Ashe. Felix almost says something sharp about it, but it’s not as if it hurts <i>him</i> to have Ashe watching all four walls of the tent.</p><p>Ashe doesn’t settle.</p><p>After several minutes of nervous rustling Felix snaps, “Just get into the middle of the tent and let us sleep.”</p><p>“Oh,” Ashe says, voice small. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…are you sure?”</p><p>Felix is already working his way back out of his bedroll so he can move it closer to the wall, and from the sounds in the darkness Sylvain is doing the same. “Just stop complaining and move,” Felix says.</p><p>Once he’s moved, Ashe stops being nearly so jumpy. It’s warmer, too, with the three of them wedged side-by-side.</p><p>Felix falls asleep easily and wakes to a vast rushing sound all around them—not quite a hiss, not quite a roar. Ashe is whimpering quietly in his sleep, but after a moment Felix places the sound as the wind they’d heard earlier, loud enough to leave the forest loud around them. He scrambles up and manages to get out of the tent without waking either of the others—he thinks—and looks around.</p><p>It’s black as pitch outside, moonless and starless, with the red embers of the fire flaring and fading as the wind drops through the trees. The air itself smells strange, green and wild, a little like breaking ice.</p><p>Professor Byleth had given Mercedes first watch after her ghost story and when Felix makes his way over to the fire she’s still there. “Is this a natural storm?” he asks. The urge to whisper is strong, but it’s not as if anyone can hear him over the wind unless they’re already awake.</p><p>“I think so!” Mercedes says. Her hair is blowing loose around her face, a dull red aura in the emberlight, but it stays put when she grabs it. Felix’s escapes his hands every time he tries, whipping across his face.</p><p>“Yes,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>Felix does not jump.</p><p>“Oh, Professor!” Mercedes’s hair flies free again as she gets distracted. “I didn’t see you coming.”</p><p>“Storms are like this here.” Professor Byleth picks up one of the canvas buckets of water by the fire and douses the embers. “Get someone to get the horses, just in case.”</p><p>Felix and Mercedes both head for their tents, calling up their Crests to see by as they go. Ashe is already awake and sitting up when Felix opens the tent flap. “What is it?”</p><p>“Storm,” Felix says. “Hey, Sylvain. <i>Sylvain</i>.” He doesn’t need to warn Ashe not to try to shake Sylvain awake, Sylvain had warned them all himself with a too-easy laugh that he hits out if you grab his head or shoulders while he’s sleeping. <i>Hits out</i> is a mild term for it, in Felix’s opinion, but then, he’s the one who almost got his nose broken a few years back. “Get up.”</p><p>Sylvain snaps awake all at once. “What’s wrong?” he asks, sitting up. “That’s some storm out there.”</p><p>“Go deal with the horses,” Felix says.</p><p>“What is this, the southern take on a fucking blizzard?” Sylvain mutters, but he gets up.</p><p>When Felix gets back outside the Crest of Blaiddyd is drifting over to where they left the horses as well. Weird. He hadn’t seen Professor Byleth—does she even know how to display her Crest? She might not. Or maybe the boar thought of going for the horses himself, since it’s hardly as if Professor Byleth can see in the dark.</p><p>“Your Highness!” Sylvain yells. “Wait up.” He picks his way over to share the boar’s light as Ingrid comes to join them.</p><p>Felix tries to remember where the fire was. With this wind it was smart of Professor Byleth to put it out—none of them want to be hoping rain comes before a wildfire starts to spread, panics the horses, and maybe destroys their things—but he doesn’t want to just sit in his tent and wait. The air is crackling, thick-feeling.</p><p>The Crest of Lamine is no longer shining across the campsite, but he can see the faint shape of the girls’ tent glowing—Mercedes or Annette or both of them must be lighting it up. Well, it’s not like anyone could sleep through this. It’s summer but it feels like high spring, earth cracking and rivers in flood.</p><p>As if he’s thought them into being, a few hard droplets of rain strike, and then a few more, and then a rush. Felix is soaked to the skin before he even manages to get back inside the tent, and at that point it just seems like a waste. The rain is cold, but he’s Faerghan and he’s had much worse, and there’s a fierceness to it—the crying of the trees, the rush of water, the battering press of the wind—that appeals.</p><p>The world goes blue-white with lightning, painting the trees as jagged black shapes against a purple sky, and then dark again, and thunder rolls so close that Felix can feel the boom of it reverberating in the space inside his lungs.</p><p>His hair is plastered to his face and the back of his neck. He wipes his bangs out of the way and they stay back, water streaming down them. His heart is racing, and everything is—it’s boundless, formless, nothing but night and water and the giddy scent of petrichor. He could lean into the wind and it would hold him up.</p><p>The next stuttering bolt of lightning shows Professor Byleth standing in the middle of the clearing, her hands on her hips, gazing up at the clouds in that moment of brilliance. Then it’s dark, and the thunder shakes Felix again. When the third strike rips the sky, Professor Byleth is looking at Felix, beckoning—how, how the <i>fuck</i>, had she known it was coming and where he was?</p><p>He displays his Crest again and makes his careful way over to her. The ground is slick and shifting, a muddy wash of wet grass.</p><p>“Feel for it,” Professor Byleth shouts when he reaches her side.</p><p>“What?” There’s tension in the air like a drawn bow, that spring-like creak of breaking ice. Is that what she means?</p><p>It releases, and the glow of his Crest is drowned in the flare of lightning.</p><p>Okay.</p><p>The next strike follows hard on the first, and then there’s a lull. The wind keeps up, and the rain still pours over him, but the air itself slackens.</p><p>“Try calling lightning to that rock.” Professor Byleth points up and to the right, where Felix remembers there was a large boulder sticking out of the side of the mountain.</p><p>He almost wants to protest—to just watch the storm a moment longer, to be swallowed up by the thunder and the rain—but he’s never shirked his training before and he won’t start now. “Is it safe?” he asks.</p><p>She nods.</p><p>It’s not a tree, after all. Bare rock shouldn’t catch fire. Felix half-doubts he’ll be able to do it at all—it comes easily to Mercedes, not so much to him—but even if he does, it won’t hurt anything. Lightning bursts again, and then there’s the space of a few heartbeats before thunder rolls after it. The storm’s moving on.</p><p>Felix sketches the gestures of the Thunder spell with as much familiarity as a basic sword block. The gestures he knows. The air stretches tight between his hands, and he can feel the lightning he calls down even before he sees it, in the springing ease before it strikes. If he’d thought he was swallowed by the storm before he was wrong; the rattling thunder sinks into his bones.</p><p>“Perfect,” Professor Byleth shouts against the wind, and turns away toward her tent.</p><p>He could say it’s not wanting to waste magic that has him not trying it again, or not wanting to risk the others, but he could do it again, and aim it just as carefully. He just…he doesn’t want to. He just wants to watch the storm a little longer—maybe not dripping wet, ugh, he should get back inside and out of these clothes—but not to <i>use</i> it, just to watch it batter itself empty against the mountain, wild and brilliant.</p><p>So he does.</p>
<hr/><p>The horses Professor Byleth had requisitioned are steady creatures, but this storm has even them restless. Dimitri keeps re-displaying his Crest, and Ingrid does the same. Sylvain would not be showing his anyway, but he has his hands full as it is, sweet-talking his own mare and trying to keep her from spooking Ashe’s. The geldings are mostly calm, and Ingrid has her steed under control. Dimitri is pleased to note that the mare he’s been using, stubborn as she is, is as unshaken as the mountain itself.</p><p>“Are storms like this down here?” Ingrid calls, in a lull between gusts of wind.</p><p>“You’re asking <i>me</i>?” Sylvain demands, and then, “No, no, sweetheart, hush—” The wind, picking up again, drags the rest of his crooning away.</p><p>Dimitri wishes they had a proper pasture here. The horses could safely be left on their own then, but tied as they are, in unfamiliar ground, if they spook and try to run they might break their tethers and then be lost. It leaves the three of them trying to steady the herd.</p><p>“I think it’s passing,” Ingrid says.</p><p>Sylvain pushes his hair back out of his face and nods. In the glow of their Crests he looks marsh-lit and eerie. “Exciting stuff, huh.”</p><p>“Very,” Dimitri says dryly. It is about the only thing about him that is dry. They will have to ask Sylvain or Annette to help with their clothes. “Good work, you two.”</p><p>“Thank you.” He can’t see Ingrid’s face, but there’s a smile in her voice.</p><p>Lightning flashes dimly beyond the trees.</p><p>“Anytime,” Sylvain says. “Oh, wait, not that.” He is joking, of course; for all his flippancy he had been out there as quickly as Dimitri and Ingrid had, and worked just as uncomplainingly.</p><p>Thunder booms in the distance.</p><p>Sylvain says, “It’s definitely moving on.” The horses know it too; when he steps away from them they look only a little restless. Ashe’s mare seems to be eyeing a mud puddle, but that is not Dimitri’s problem at the moment. They’ll have to groom the horses in the morning, but with no stable at hand and not even a tent large enough for nine horses there is nothing that can be done about it now. “Ready to go back to sleep?”</p><p>“Oh yes,” Ingrid says, stretching. With her arms out and her face upturned toward the rain she might be a statue of victory, if it weren’t for the sodden rope of her braid.</p><p>Dimitri agrees. “It will be third watch soon enough.”</p><p>“Not my problem,” Sylvain says. “Annette has it tomor—today? Today, probably, it’s gotta be past midnight.”</p><p>“Come on, then.” Ingrid turns back toward the camp proper, the Crest of Daphnel floating above her hand, and Sylvain follows, with Dimitri bringing up the rear.</p><p>The rain is still pouring down, even though the wind has blown away the thunder. When Dimitri reaches his tent, he lets his Crest go and strips in the darkness, rather than bring that much water into the tent, before crawling inside and pulling a towel and dry clothes out of his bag by feel.</p><p>“Is all well?” Dedue asks.</p><p>Dimitri is startlingly cold. Still, the towel is some help, and dry clothes are as well, though he had hardly packed his winter things. And he would much rather this than the heat back at Garreg Mach. “Yes. The storm is moving on, and the horses are settled in again.”</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>The rain on the taut canvas of the tent’s roof sounds so loud it could almost be hail, a rush of sound that drowns out everything beneath it. Dimitri works his way back into his bedroll—ah, warm—before falling asleep almost immediately.</p><p>When he wakes the sun is already up in a cloudless, clean-washed sky.</p>
<hr/><p>“No weapons practice today,” Professor Byleth says over breakfast.</p><p>Ingrid considers this a good and reasonable plan on the professor’s part. The thought of Annette swinging an axe on muddy, uneven ground doesn’t bear thinking.</p><p>Felix, of course, does not. “But—”</p><p>“It’s not safe,” Professor Byleth says firmly, and takes another forkful of trout. “Walk, hunt, fish, work on your magic, but no weapons.”</p><p>“Very sensible, Professor,” Dimitri says.</p><p>Ingrid puts down her mug of tea and takes another piece of trout from the skillet herself. “We need to groom the horses more thoroughly—I gave them a quick check this morning but I’m not sure it’s good enough.”</p><p>Professor Byleth nods approval in that way she has that makes Ingrid feel warm all the way through. “After breakfast.”</p><p>They all tend their own horses, checking hooves and working mud out of coats—a few of them definitely rolled around on the wet grass once they were unsupervised—before separating. Felix picks up a bow and starts to head up-mountain.</p><p>The professor’s voice stops him. “No one goes off alone.”</p><p>Felix, scowling, returns to the group.</p><p>“I can go with you,” Dimitri offers. This is such a bad plan that only Dimitri would have thought of it. Ingrid braces herself to intervene, even though the storm kept her awake and she’d rather not.</p><p>Before she can make herself, Sylvain says, “Nah, I’ll go. You want me to get some exercise, right, your Highness?”</p><p>Felix nods at him and leaves again, Sylvain hurrying to catch up. Ingrid doesn’t want to sit around all day, but she doesn’t really need a serious hike, either. It <i>is</i> wet and muddy, and they <i>are</i> on the side of the mountain. Professor Byleth is right about that. “Mercedes, do you want to go for a walk with me?” she asks.</p><p>“Me?” Mercedes asks. “Oh…certainly! That sounds nice.”</p><p>“Just a walk,” Ingrid says. It’s not surprising that Mercedes wasn’t born in Faerghus; she doesn’t have the pared-down toughness that the rest of them do, even Annette. Ingrid wouldn’t want it for herself, but she doesn’t want to change Mercedes and her sweets and her lavender-scented handkerchiefs, either.</p><p>Mercedes gathers her shawl around her. “It’ll be lovely after the rain, don’t you think?”</p><p>Ingrid does think, and says so.</p><p>They set out slowly, boots squeaking on the grass as they head away from the campsite before mud and pine needles swallow up the sound. The air is shockingly clear, with no mist at all, and the shadows of the trees are sharply vivid as spilled ink. Drops of rain or dew glitter on the feathery sweet green of ferns.</p><p>“Oh, look,” Ingrid says, pointing. The bark has peeled off a tree stump, leaving it weathered pale and looking like nothing so much as a twist of silver wires.</p><p>“I wonder what makes it do that.” Mercedes steps carefully into the undergrowth. “It’s like the tree was put together out of tiny…cords, almost—like braiding a rope.”</p><p>Ingrid has seen trees twisted like rope, their bark running up around the trunk in a spiral, but she’s seen too many that aren’t to think it’s that easy. “There might be a book in the library back at the monastery. They have some amazing things there—I found one about farming techniques that says…oh, never mind, it’s not…”</p><p>“No, I’d like to hear,” Mercedes says, straightening up and smiling over her shoulder at Ingrid. “If you want to talk about it I’m happy to listen.”</p><p>“What do <i>you</i> want to talk about?” Ingrid asks.</p><p>Mercedes turns to face her. “Me? Oh, I don’t…”</p><p>“There must be something.” Ingrid starts walking again, checking behind her to make sure Mercedes is walking as well. “You always ask us what’s wrong, but you don’t talk about whatever’s bothering you.”</p><p>“Oh,” Mercedes says softly. “I don’t really…I mean…I’m quite all right, really.”</p><p>The woods open up in front of them. Sunlight pours into a hollow, vivid with fluttering orange as butterflies dart between thistles and bishop’s lace.</p><p>“If you do want to talk,” Ingrid says. “If something is bothering you, I hope you know that we’re here to help you too. Even Felix.”</p><p>Mercedes laughs at that, and bends to pick a spray of bishop’s lace and tuck it into her hair.</p>
<hr/><p>Dedue goes with Annette and Ashe to find plantstuffs for lunch, and to walk along the way. Professor Byleth has stayed near the campsite to fish again, and Dimitri should be safe enough with her. Of everyone at Garreg Mach Monastery, their professor is the one Dedue trusts the most in this respect.</p><p>“<i>What</i> a storm last night,” Annette says, shaking out a kerchief before folding it up and tucking it away in her pocket again. “Were you two all right?”</p><p>“It was pretty loud,” Ashe says. “I was okay, though. Dedue?”</p><p>“I as well.” It had been frustrating, to be of no use—unable to summon the light of a Crest, in the driving wind and rain that would have extinguished any candle not wholly shielded by glass much too expensive and fragile to bring on this trip; unable be of use, as Dimitri was, when Professor Byleth had come to wake them and ask for extra help with the horses.</p><p>Horses are not Dedue’s preferred means of transport. In Duscur, there had been ponies, and they were pack animals, not mounts. They were also considerably smaller than these Fódlani chargers bred to carry full-grown men in plate armor. It seems that Fódlani horses return Dedue’s sentiments, which has not helped.</p><p>“I wonder if that’s what Professor Byleth meant when she said it didn’t rain or else it rained a lot.” Annette dives into the bushes only to emerge empty-handed. “Drat. I thought I saw bilberries, but it was just a reflection off the leaves.”</p><p>The leaves, and the pine needles, are indeed reflecting. Sunlight turns their upper sides almost white, while the undersides remain cool and dark. Patches of vibrant green float in the shadowy pines ahead, as the leaves of one of the aspens filter the sun through them.</p><p>Ashe says, “There’ll be more somewhere around here.”</p><p>“Definitely,” Annette says. “I hadn’t realized they got <i>so</i> much rain here with the air so dry, though! I guess even in drier parts it’s still Verdant Rain Moon, though. Oh—there they are!”</p><p>It is not bilberries she has found, but a patch of dandelions. Their heads glow fiercely yellow, and their leaves are small enough to still be tender. Annette gathers the leaves into her kerchief quickly, and breaks a few of the blossoms off as well. She tucks one behind Ashe’s ear, then looks consideringly at Dedue.</p><p>Ashe is biting his lips to hold back a smile, and failing; the corners of his mouth twitch with it, and even if they were not, the smile shines in his eyes.</p><p>“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Annette says regretfully. Ashe gives up and starts laughing.</p><p>Dedue has not had anyone offer him flowers in years, and hopes the depth of his surprise, and how touched he is at such a trivial gesture, does not show. “I could bend over, if you wish. Or you could simply give it to me.”</p><p>“I think I’ll feel a little less like a child if I just give it to you,” Annette says. “But it’s very sweet of you to offer!”</p><p>Being called <i>sweet</i> is taking more than a little getting used to, though Annette is not the only one to have done it since Dedue came to Garreg Mach. He holds out his hand and takes the dandelion Annette gives him, like a tiny sunburst. The sap is bitter, but she has blotted the worst of it on her hands already, and he is not eating it, only wearing it tucked into his hair. “Thank you,” he says gravely.</p><p>Annette beams at him and darts on ahead. “Thank <i>you</i>,” she calls back.</p><p>The two of them follow. Ashe finds another patch of raspberries, and manages to gather a respectable number of them so deftly that he barely scratches his hands.</p><p>“How do you <i>do</i> that?” Annette asks, wide-eyed.</p><p>“Oh…” Ashe looks away. “I just picked up a few things here and there, I guess.”</p><p>Annette tilts her head, then shrugs. “Well, you don’t have to tell us, but you’re the official bramble gatherer from now on. When Mercie and I got some yesterday both of us—not just me!—scratched our hands up so badly that Mercie had to heal us. Oh…don’t tell the professor I said that.”</p><p>“I am sure she would not mind,” Dedue says. Professor Byleth is not cruel, and it is not as if they have a battle to be saving their resources for. “This trip was a kindness of hers in the first place.”</p><p>“That’s true,” Annette says, relaxing. “All right, come on. There’s still further to go! I want to see if we can find some more greens, and hopefully something to season the fish or the…whatever Felix manages to find.”</p><p>Ashe says, “Let’s go, then.”</p>
<hr/><p>They lunch on rabbit and greens again, and for once Mercedes is pleased to note that nobody really seems to be bickering. Even Felix is in a good mood, though the delicious meal probably doesn’t hurt. The gatherers came back with flowers, as well as plants—Annie has a dandelion in her buttonhole and harebells tucked neatly into her hair loops, and Dedue has one of each woven in his hair. Ashe has a yellow smudge on his cheek and a dandelion in his buttonhole as well.</p><p>It’s so nice, Mercedes thinks, leaning back on her elbows and tipping her face up to the sun, to see them having silly fun. Flowers are what being this age is supposed to be about, not mourning family or working yourself to the bone or dealing with all the horrible things that some of the people from Faerghus say about anyone of Duscur.</p><p>She’d worked hard to get to the Officers’ Academy, and she doesn’t intend to give that up or regret it, but it’s so nice not to have to worry so much about anyone, just for a few days. She hardly even knows what to do with herself, it’s so peaceful. She could take a nap right here in the sunshine, if she wanted—the ground is still damp, but a good blanket has taken care of that—and not worry about anything.</p><p>Somewhere far away, she can hear the soft humming of bees and the gurgling rush of the stream. Sunlight lies warm and heavy as a quilt over her, and she lets herself fall asleep.</p><p>When she wakes it’s slowly, drifting back up to awareness. Annie is talking to someone—oh, it’s Professor Byleth. She’s still trying to figure out how to combine spells. Sylvain could probably help, but of course he won’t.</p><p>Just as Mercedes thinks that, Sylvain says, “That won’t work, though—wouldn’t you need to combine them at the root?”</p><p>“Well, I thought—” Annie breaks off. “No, you might be right. Which theorem do you think I should apply?”</p><p>“I don’t know anything about theorems,” Sylvain laughs. “It was just a guess. You and the professor are talking loud enough I can’t get a nap in.”</p><p>Annie makes a frustrated noise.</p><p>“Ask Lysithea,” Professor Byleth says. “Hanneman says she’s very smart.”</p><p>“I <i>will</i>,” Annie says, “but we won’t be back at the monastery for almost a week, and I don’t want to wait that long to figure this out!”</p><p>“Sorry,” Professor Byleth says. She really sounds sorry, brief as the word is, but of course they all know that she hadn’t had any training in magic before she was hired, and she’s done an incredible job as it is. From what Dedue has said about his Faith tutoring she’s doing it just like Mercedes herself would.</p><p>Hmm. Mercedes sits up. “Professor,” she says, “have <i>you</i> gotten to relax on this vacation?”</p><p>Professor Byleth just stares at her, her beautiful eyes exceptionally blank. “I’ve been fishing every day,” she says finally. “That’s relaxing.”</p><p>Well, Mercedes supposes she has a point. Plenty of people find fishing relaxing, and it’s so beautiful up here that anyone would be soothed. There haven’t been any papers or exams to grade, either, or even lessons to prepare. They’ve done some training, but for an experienced mercenary like Professor Byleth, it can’t be that difficult to oversee some weapons practice.</p><p>“All right,” Mercedes says, “but let me know if I can do anything to help you!”</p><p>Annie says, “The rest of us can help too!”</p><p>Professor Byleth smiles at them both, and nods. It feels a little bit like winning something.</p><p>The sun is still high overhead, so Mercedes lets herself lie back down. A blur of motion in the branches of a tall fir nearby resolves itself into a squirrel. It could almost be dancing to the hollow chirping of an unfamiliar bird, a sweet bell-like sound…</p><p>A little more rest, maybe. It’s so <i>nice</i> up here, the air sweet and clean. Even the bitter undertone of dead wood isn’t that bad. It rounds out the sweetness of grass and flowers and the clean stridency of pine resin like a base note in a perfume.</p>
<hr/><p>After the midday rest, Professor Byleth collects everyone and brings them back to the pond. Ashe isn’t really sure about this, but he trusts their professor and he isn’t going to back out of any of her lessons, even if they <i>do</i> involve swimming. Besides, the water isn’t that deep. It should be fine.</p><p>Last night’s rain has raised the water level in the place where the stream broadens into a pond. It’s definitely higher than it was.</p><p>“Hm,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>The surface of the pond ripples, reflections dancing across its surface and bits of sunlight dancing across the leaves overhead. Ashe thinks he remembers it being a little more still yesterday.</p><p>“…How fast is that going?” Sylvain asks.</p><p>“Fishing was all right,” Professor Byleth says slowly. “Let me—”</p><p>“Professor, no,” Dimitri says quickly. “If it is dangerous, you could be badly hurt.”</p><p>Sylvain picks up a reasonably-sized stick and throws it into the pond. It bobs, then starts drifting downstream. “There might be undercurrents,” he says.</p><p>“Might be,” Felix scoffs.</p><p>“Can’t we wait until we get back to the monastery?” Mercedes asks. Ashe is not going to admit he’s a bit relieved by her question. “It’s going to be <i>cold</i>, and if there’s a current it might not be safe…”</p><p>Professor Byleth nods.</p><p>Now that he doesn’t have to worry about swimming, or maybe drowning, Ashe can admire the pond again. The banks look almost like parts of the greenhouse, with the plants newly underwater looking like they’re seen through glass. Sharp patches of light sparkle on the water.</p><p>It’ll be nice, too, to know that when they do get back to the monastery there’s still some change to look forward to. It won’t be as pretty, but it might still be fun.</p><p>“Who wants to get the fishing lines?” Professor Byleth asks.</p><p>“I’ll go,” Felix says. He’s back quickly, with lines and with those of the fishing poles that haven’t met with any kind of accident—five in all.</p><p>“I’ll just watch,” Mercedes says.</p><p>“Me too.” Sylvain finds a nearby rock, with lichen growing around its base that looks almost like hoarfrost, to lounge on.</p><p>Annette eyes the pond and sighs. “I don’t really…I’m all right not fishing too.”</p><p>“We can cut more poles,” Felix says.</p><p>“No, it’s all right,” Annette says firmly. “I don’t need to fish.”</p><p>Felix looks like he’s ready to argue with her, but actually manages not to. Professor Byleth cuts one more pole, and then hands out bits of jerky for everyone to bait their hooks with.</p><p>It’s nice, up here. Christophe had taught Ashe how to fish outside Lonato’s home, of course, which was a lot more open than this. The ground was marshy in places, and fogs rolled through often—not as bad as the magic fog they’d had to deal with when—</p><p>No, he’s not thinking about that.</p><p>But fishing with Christophe had been different. They’d been by the river in almost open ground, with a lot fewer of the heavy pines and firs that make up so much of the woodland up here. It’s not so familiar that it hurts. It just makes Ashe wish he could turn and say, “Look at this!”</p><p>He can’t, but thinking about it helps. It’s almost like his family is still really here with him, when he feels a tug on his line and pulls against it just the way Christophe taught him. This time he actually manages to catch a fish that’s big enough that he doesn’t feel guilty about eating it, too, and his new friends’ cheers as he takes it off the hook feel good, too, in their own way.</p>
<hr/><p>“<i>Please</i> let me cook!” Annette says. “Please, I’ll be really careful, and we’re all in one place so you’ll all be able to keep an eye on me if you want!”</p><p>She hasn’t been allowed to help with <i>any</i> of the real cooking, and it’s been getting more and more frustrating every meal. She likes cooking, and it seems like a fun challenge to work with just the things they can catch and gather themselves, with no rush and no need to worry about having a campfire. She wants to help, and everyone is just expecting her to set something on fire again.</p><p>“It should be all right,” Dedue says.</p><p>Annette absolutely beams at him. It’s so nice to have support, especially from someone who’s as good a cook as Dedue is. “I promise this time I’ll be really careful,” she says to Professor Byleth.</p><p>“Okay,” Professor Byleth says.</p><p>“Really?!” Annette twirls, almost loses her balance, and just manages to catch herself before an embarrassing fall that would completely ruin her claims that she’s definitely got this. “Thank you so much! I <i>promise</i> I won’t burn anything!”</p><p>She actually doesn’t, even if Dedue and Ashe both have to remind her to check the undersides of the fish filets as they get seared in the skillet. She <i>does</i> check, and that’s the important thing. And if she has to keep telling herself that until she believes it, well, she’ll just keep telling herself, then. Besides, it tastes really good—not quite <i>as</i> good as the last time Dedue cooked, but good, and food that she managed to make herself is always more satisfying.</p><p>“That wasn’t bad,” Felix says.</p><p>Annette scowls. “You could say it was good!”</p><p>“He really can’t,” Sylvain says. If looks were swords, he’d be bleeding from the glare Felix gives him, but he just laughs it off.</p><p>“It <i>was</i> good,” Ashe says.</p><p>Ingrid nods. “Absolutely. Thank you for cooking, Annette.”</p><p>“You’re getting so much better!” Mercie says with a smile. “When I think about the first time you—”</p><p>“Okay!” Annette jumps up and starts grabbing plates. “I should go rinse these off, don’t you think? Mercie, you should come with me.”</p><p>Professor Byleth shakes her head.</p><p>“You cooked,” Dimitri says. “It is only fair that someone else do the washing.” Annette hesitates, and he gets up and takes the plates out of her hand. “Thank you for dinner.”</p><p>Mercie, fortunately, doesn’t resume her story—Annette wouldn’t trade having met her at the School of Sorcery for much of anything, but she does really wish that Mercie, who never seems embarrassed by anything, would remember that other people might not like having their youthful mistakes retold in front of people they’d like to impress.</p><p>The night is clear, with none of the clouds that rolled in last night, and the stars begin to prickle against the darkening sky. Annette finds the Wheel, probably, but she tried two other groups of stars before she found the one she thinks is right. The sky is so…<i>big</i>, big enough that it doesn’t even matter what the constellations look like, or which ones they are. Still, she looks for Agnea the Charioteer anyway, to remind herself that she’s perfectly capable of finding any constellation with an actual shape, and finds her aiming her bow at the north star.</p><p>Which one the north star is is <i>not</i> Annette’s problem tonight.</p><p>There’s a softness to the space between the stars, like velvet, or black fur, and the stars themselves hang down so close she feels she ought to be able to reach out and touch them. They float in the sky like sparks in dark water, winking and shimmering and—</p><p>“Look!” she cries. “A shooting star!”</p><p>It cuts through the sky in a brilliant line, fading even as it goes.</p><p>“In Duscur that is viewed as a good omen,” Dedue says.</p><p>“In Faerghus too,” Ashe says. “You’re supposed to make a wish if you see one.”</p><p>Dedue makes a thoughtful sound but doesn’t protest. He deserves wishes—<i>all</i> of them deserve wishes. Annette closes her eyes and tries to think of a good one.</p>
<hr/><p>Wishes are a waste of time, Sylvain figures, but it’s not like he’s going to say so. He doesn’t bother making one, just keeps watching the sky.</p><p>It was thoughtful of Professor Byleth to bring them here. She’s had it easier than she should, but it looks like she’s not completely heartless. It’s been nice, pretending they don’t have any responsibilities north of the southern tip of Adrestia—that kind of thing is an important trick to learn to get by.</p><p>The night air is cooling around them, and the campfire is nice and warm. Sylvain unfastens his mind from thoughts of wishes, and trouble, and anything else like that, and just traces patterns in the stars. The fluting call of a nightingale drifts to them on the breeze.</p><p>Annette yawns, and then immediately apologizes.</p><p>“Watches?” Professor Byleth asks.</p><p>“I will take first watch, Professor,” Dimitri says.</p><p>“Oh good,” Annette says. “Goodnight, everyone.” She heads off to the girls’ tent.</p><p>Sylvain considers volunteering for third again, but if he’s not careful he’ll get a reputation as a morning person, and he’s just not prepared for that.</p><p>“I’ll take third,” Felix says, getting up. “Don’t wake me up when you get back to the tent, either of you.”</p><p>Ashe shakes his head. “I’ll be careful!”</p><p>Another nightingale joins the first, making some strange bird harmony that doesn’t sound like much to human ears. One of the logs in the fire crumbles to cinders in a brief fountain of sparks. Sylvain almost can’t decide whether to stay out here or go and get some sleep. The skies are still clear, so hopefully they’ll be spared another midnight storm.</p><p>He’d just go to bed, normally, but the air is crystalline, and the sky is deep, and it’s… Not to get sentimental on anyone now, but there’s probably a reason girls like poetry about the moon and stars. He likes some of it himself, actually, though he wouldn’t admit it to just anyone—they’d take anything he said about poetry much too seriously after that.</p><p>The fire dies further down. It’s peach-red now, the scent of woodsmoke mingling more strongly with the rich smell of the woods.</p><p>“I should turn in too,” Ingrid says.</p><p>Professor Byleth gets up as well, which is everyone else’s cue. They leave Dimitri by the fire. It’s really not bad, Sylvain thinks, working his way into his bedroll as carefully as he can so he doesn’t elbow either Ashe or the side of the tent. He wouldn’t mind if they made a habit of this.</p><p>Outside, the nightingale sings on, and the wind sighs high in the pines.</p><p>No, he could definitely be okay with doing this again.</p>
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